Biotech firms are taking a lot of heat lately. Gilead Sciences, for example, is being dragged back before government entities to defend the pricing of a hepatitis C drug that not only saves more lives than anything that's come before it but does so more cheaply than previous alternatives (see your June issue for details). It works so well that people are breaking the door down to get it, which is straining our already strained (and broken) socialized medical programs.
What regulators and lawmakers seem to forget is that without profits to fund expensive clinical drug discovery and development, we'd be dropping like flies from diseases that have long been tossed in history's dustbin. Furthermore, without expectation of future returns, new drugs for diseases that could kill us will simply not appear.
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