I just read James Gray’s letter to the editor (March 29) about drug representatives and manufacturers. I can’t believe that he included the statement, “Most of their profits go for the research and development of life-saving new drugs.”

The only conclusion I can draw is that he hasn’t seen all the studies, private and government, over the past 15 years or more that clearly found drug companies spend far more on advertising their products than on research. The studies also show that the lion’s share of the research money is obtained from the government (taxpayers) in many cases, and then the manufacturers lobby to kill any regulation on their business practices.

The various investigations into drug company representatives and their associations with the medical profession have shown, for the most part, a questionable, if not illegal, influence exerted over practitioners to encourage them to prescribe products.

If Gray thinks that Big Pharma is more concerned with health issues than profits, I have to ask myself whether he works for the drug manufacturers, or has been on an isolated island for the last 15 years.

M. David Shain, Jay


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