Yes, this is sort of another NPR story, but do not head for the door yet.

On Morning Edition today they had a story about “Pharmaceutical Giant, Merck”, and their attempts to silence critics of their drug Vioxx. We are told up front that all drug companies pay influential doctors to promote new drugs. In this case, Dr. Gurkirpal Singh, a well known doctor from Stanford University, gave over 40 lectures in 7 months promoting the new drug. Merck paid him up to $2,500 per lecture. At some point news started leaking out about possible harmful side effects of the drug. Dr. Singh began pointing these out in his lectures. Well, needless to say, Merck got a little upset with that and canceled the rest of his lectures. Somehow this proves that the “evil” drug company, Merck, strong armed its critics into remaining silent about the possible side effects of Vioxx.

Notice the totally unbiased “reporting”:

The Merck sales machine, which included the departments of marketing, scientific education and physician outreach, had begun to show its other face. It had paid Singh fat speaking fees. Now it was canceling many of his educational lectures.

The way I see it, Dr. Singh was being paid to promote the new drug. Thus, he was a defacto employee of Merck at the time. When he started giving Merck bad press, they basically fired him. So what is your point? If I am hired by an organization and at some time during my employment with that organization I start to say bad things about it or criticize it in public, chances are that I will be fired. Am I missing something here? It makes perfect sense to me. Where is the story? It is my guess that the findings about possible harmful side effects were very preliminary in nature and that Merck did not want to harm its sales based on preliminary findings.

Could Merck have done this better? I am sure. But we are not talking about some annoying little problem that was being crushed. We are talking about a multi-million dollar loss if wrong information was being disseminated to health professionals. At least NPR had the guts to add this:

Merck says its physicians strongly believed in the safety and benefits of Vioxx. The company says the risks of Vioxx weren’t clear until just last fall, when, it says, Merck acted promptly and voluntarily withdrew Vioxx.

That’s right. They pulled if before the FDA made them. They did so voluntarily. NPR tosses around the number 38,000 as the number of people who have died from Vioxx. They mention that twice in the report. Yet there is nothing to back up that claim. What study has shown that? Where did that number come from?

But all this brings me to my larger point. I do not think that large companies are inherently evil, just because they are large. Without large companies, thousands upon thousands of people would not have jobs, prices for goods and services would be much higher, and research for new products would be severely limited. I am sure that there have been and there will be large companies who break the law or pollute the environment, but with today’s laws and enforcement, it seems like a smaller chance than it used to be.

It had probably been only a few weeks since Merck pulled Viox (they did so voluntarily) before I began seeing commercials from lawyers trying to cash in on Merck. The commercials all began the same way, “Merck, a multi-billion dollar drug company.” Basically they are saying, “Hey, Merck has got deep pockets. Let’s fleece them for cash. They can afford it. Besides, big companies are evil.” Do you see what is wrong with this picture?

For too many years, the press and Democrats have demonized large companies. Sometimes they had a right to, due to excesses or fraud, but most of the time you hear them claiming to stand up for the little guy against the evil multi-national company. As a result, a large portion of the American population thinks large companies are out to screw them. The irony is that these same people buy the products that the “evil” companies make at a lower price because the company is large. Same goes with new products. Innovations and breakthroughs come from the research labs of large companies because they are the only ones with enough capital to be able to afford such in depth research. Joe Blow American buys the drugs that heal their families, relieve their pain and give them rock hard erections. But none of those things would be possible without research and funding by large companies.

There is usually at least one talking head a month that is out complaining about the high cost of drugs. They claim that the drug manufacturers are greedy and that the drugs could be sold at a fraction of the cost. What they do not tell you is that the large drug companies have to re-coop their research costs for developing the drug and turn a profit BEFORE their patent expires on the drug and the market is flooded with cheap generic drugs. Some people point to Canada. Why do they get charged less for drugs? Simple. The Canadian government imposes price controls on the drugs. Other countries do the same. That forces the large drug manufacturers to keep prices artificially high in countries that do not have price controls. Thus, here in the U.S. we have to pay higher drug costs. The next obvious question is, “Why not impose price controls here in the U.S.?” The answer is that the drug makers will not be able to re-coop their costs and so they will stop making new drugs.

Here is where Liberals seem to become disconnected from reality. Drug companies do not research new drugs for the betterment of mankind. They do so to make money. That is the real world, moonbats. As much as you may try to hide from it, everything that is done in the world has an economic motivation to it. There is nothing wrong with that. If a company can not make enough money on a new product to justify the research and devolvement of that new product, guess what? That product will not be made. Well, it will not be made until the business climate changes so that it is profitable to research and produce that new product.

In college I had a class called Engineering Economy. It was a course with a lot of present worth, future worth and P given F problems. About the only thing I really got out of that class was when we learned about “Do nothing” cost. What that means is that given the price of energy, materials, labor and other overhead combined with interest rates and what you can sell the product for, there are times when you simply do not run the factory. Running the factory will cause you to lose money. Sure you can still sell your products, but you will not be able to sell them for enough to justify even turning the lights on in the factory. Price controls would do that to drug makers.

I enjoy having drugs that can heal me and my family. It is amazing to me that you can get something to fix almost anything. AIDS patients are living longer, healthier lives. Cancer patients are beating cancer in record numbers. If you have heartburn or acid reflux there is help. If you have severe allergies there is now relief. All because of “evil” drug companies.

Here is the final fact in all of this: If you make it so that drug companies feel it is not worth their while to research and develop new drugs, they will stop making new drugs. Period. That will be to the detriment of the entire world. Then you will be screaming for the government to do something. What will they do? Become a drug company? Do you really want the U.S. government doing research and production for new drugs? Oh yeah, that will be efficient… And how will they pay to do this? Taxes. In the end it will cost more (in total dollars, including raised taxes and the final cost to the public) for the government to be in the drug business than for drug companies to do the same thing. So what have you gained?

Some of you may think I am must be a cheerleader for big business and for drug makers in particular. I am not. However, I believe in the free market and I firmly believe that the private sector can always do better than the government when it comes to providing goods and services. If a product harms you, then you are entitled to realistic compensation. Not because the company has deep pockets, but because real harm was done to you. Just remember when you hear the left wing whack jobs out there fighting against globalization and against big business to ask yourself what you would do if those whack jobs were successful and large companies collapsed. Prices go up, services decline and innovation stops.