Czuch:

> But who bears the cost of making those pills.... the cost of the research and
> the regulatory hurdles and trials and manufacturing??? Thats right, the US does

I am sorry to disagree with this and to call such a statement ignorant national chauvinism.

I am a chemist and I have worked doing research for those pharmaceuticals that you are claiming are the product of American research superiority.

I can give some examples that will put this to rest for good. I worked doing research in drugs for treating osteoporosis. The drugs in question were Fosamax and similar drugs. Fosamax was developed by Merck, an American company based on New Jersey. Fosamax was invented by a group of chemists working in Ontario, Canada. They were all Canadian employees working for Merck, an American company. At the same time, the main chemical reaction used to make Fosamax was discovered and extensively researched by a Soviet Russian chemist called Alexader Arbuzov. The chemical reaction is called the Arbuzov Rearrangement in his honour.

The question is, who deserves credit? The American company? The Canadian chemists who developed the drug? The Russian scientists who first discovered these chemical reactions? Merck has made hundreds of millions selling this drug. The Canadian chemists got their 50K per year salary for doing this. The Soviet chemist got what? Well, he got screwed because as far as I know Merck never paid royalties to him or his family.

If you study chemistry, you will discover that scientists come from all over the world. There are great chemists in Germany, England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, China, etc. If you open the pages of any chemistry journal, you will find that publications come from all over the world. Not only that, but pharmaceutical companies are everywhere. The US has Merck, Johnson and Johnson, Teva, etc. Germany has Basf. Switzerland has Pfizer. England has Bristol-Myers. The list goes on and on.

Yes, pharmaceutical companies invest a lot of money in reasearch and development. They also make billions at the expense of consumers. What is more important? Pharmaceutical companies making billions or millions of poor people dying around the world because medicines are too expensive? People forget how hard pharmaceutical companies have fought to protect their "patent" rights, while at the same time millions of people died in developing countries because profits took precedence over compassion.