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..::: NEWS RELEASE
..::: APRIL 20, 2005
Pharmaceutical Firms' Selfishness Is a Virtue
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA—When it comes to drug policy, at least one
pro-capitalist educational organization, Americans for Free Choice in
Medicine (AFCM), insists that leaving pharmaceutical firms alone—as
against regulating them further, as the White House and Washington
propose—is the best solution.
"Open the approval process for new drugs to private
laboratories, whether corporate or non-profit,” AFCM Executive Director
Richard Ralston dares the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the
politicians who control the government agency. “Such research could be
funded by drug companies and paid to third party institutions that
randomly assign research to qualified independent labs that meet
objective medical standards.”
Ralston argues that the FDA has failed to promote the
general welfare of America’s doctors, drug firms and patients for a long
time—lately with its dictates shutting down arthritis drugs—and it’s
time to let drug firms strive to meet patient demand in a free market.
America’s medical system, AFCM asserts, desperately needs it.
“Reforms could be undertaken over an extended period,
selecting one category of drugs at a time,” Ralston suggests. “It could
apply only to new research, so that work currently underway would not be
interrupted. We should explore this and other alternatives to placing
our health exclusively in the hands of omniscient and omnipotent
government. The best protection for patients is the self-interest of
drug companies.”
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, (AFCM), was
founded in 1993. AFCM educates the public about the principles of
socialized medicine and free market ideas, such as HSAs and tax reform,
and publishes a consumer's guide on its Web site (http://www.afcm.org).
AFCM is the nation's only educational organization based on individual
rights, personal responsibility, and free market ideas in medicine.
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Copyright © 2005 Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. All rights reserved.
For reprint permission, contact AFCM.
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