LETTERS
Letters Morality of Medicine As a businessman and as a friend and admirer of Dean Ebert, I was disappointed in your article [“The Morality of Medicine” by David Ignatius, October] criticizing...
...Right To Read is coordinating the investment of nearly $500 million by various units of the Office of Education that operate reading, or reading related, programs...
...Just what makes you think that these unidentified panelists are absolutely right and Squibb scientists and the outside experts advising us are absolutely wrong...
...What is most disturbing to me about your article is that it seems to be based on the assumption that in a controversy between the government and a group of its citizens (if you grant that Squibb consists for this purpose of its citizen employees and shareholders) the government is bound to be right...
...But it is hardly a question of consumer protection in any generally accepted sense...
...Of course, many small farmers do enthusiastically support the federal farm probL grams...
...Some 240 school based and community based Right To Read sites now serve almost every state in the nation...
...Polly Roberts is the author of the farm subsidy section of the Nader report, Power and Land in California...
...Hightower argues, small and me dium-sized farmers operate considerably more efficiently than the big agribusiness corporations...
...Of course, in a country that commends subsidies to property but condemns subsidies to people, a guaranteed minimum income lacks political palatability...
...On the contrary, a free market would be the best thing that could happen to them, and to consumers and taxpayers too...
...It was, in fact, closed June 30, 1973, but the nationwide Right To Read program of the U. S. Office of Education is still very much alive and has assumed the responsibilities previously delegated to the NRC...
...Thirty-one states have been funded to develop Right To Read programs statewide...
...New Deal legislation authorizing producers’ cartels under socalled “marketing orders” was likewise designed and used by the giants against their small competition...
...There must be other doctors Squibb could have turned to if it really had been looking for scientific excellence rather than the implied support of the nation’s two most prestigious medical schools...
...But in these days of soaring commodity prices, booming agricultural exports, and high farm profits, we can safely quit worrying about overproduction...
...Back in the 1950s and ’60% there would have been a grain of truth to this argument...
...Washington, D. C. S. P. Marland is a former Assistant Secretary for Education for the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare...
...Letters Morality of Medicine As a businessman and as a friend and admirer of Dean Ebert, I was disappointed in your article [“The Morality of Medicine” by David Ignatius, October] criticizing his consulting relationship with Squibb Corporation...
...I think we should raise incomes directly, without singhng out farmers for special attention, perhaps with a guaranteed minimum income...
...Hghtower and many USDA officials that an end to government control of agriculture would release a flood of produce, swamping the markets, driving down prices, and putting small farmers out of business...
...It is also significant that the second doctor testifying for Squibb was not the researcher who developed the drug, or the physician who supervised the field trials, but Lewis Thomas, dean of the Yale Medical School...
...Right to Read Your September 1973 article, “Right to Read: Lost in PR’ [by Wallace Roberts], is extremely misleading...
...In addition, Right To Read has $14.2 million of its own to continue in Fiscal Year 1974 its selective investment in promising sites and the dissemination and installation of good practices...
...POLLY ROBERTS, Berkeley, Calif...
...Are you suggesting that, if we had set our sights lower and been satisfied with second-rate medical counsel, there would have been no issue of propriety at all...
...Milk marketing orders have squeezed out small dairymen across the country, and entertained us with the well-financed intrigues of the Associated Milk Producers, Inc...
...If he really does mean a free market, then let us encourage his delusion...
...It should not surprise readers of The Washington Monthly that New Deal price support legislation was written by big farmers-notably the Farm Bureau Federationfor big farmers, and at the expense of small farmers, consumers, and taxpayers...
...Of course, the plight of the small farmer, then as now, drew many a crocodile tear...
...By choosing to ignore this point, you seemed to imply that there was something sinister about our having highly regarded medical scientists serving as consultants...
...But, with or without a minimum income, I feel confident that an end to the government programs and to the more egregious tax loopholes would effectively halt the exodus of all but the smallest farmers...
...In fact, there could hardly be a better time to get Uncle Sam off the farm...
...As far as OE’s Right To Read effort is concerned, however, PR stands for program results...
...RICHARD M. FURLAiJD New York, N. Y. Richard Furlaud is president of the Squibb Corporation...
...In any event, Squibb doesn’t settle for second best, and I think most consumers are glad we don’t...
...A glance at the history of government interference in agriculture bears out my point...
...In this case, where there is no question as to the safety of the product or as to its efficacy (it cures the people it purports to cure) or as to the fact that it does mitigate a well-known side effect of tetracycline therapy (reduction of the growth of monilial organisms) and where the only question is the clinical significance in certain patients of this reduction of monilial growth, the issue is particularly intricate from a scientific point of view...
...Agribusiness I would like to commend Jim Hightower’s excellent article, “The Case for the Small Farmer ” [September] . However, I disagree with him that a return to the free market would spell disaster for small farmers...
...The farm programs had stimulated substantial overproduction, in the sense that farmers were producing more than they could sell at artificially hlgh support prices...
...By its nature, and original statement of purpose, the NRC was indeed PR (public relations) oriented...
...It is hard to convince a man who feels absolutely dependent on that $500 check from the government that he is actually worse off-land and credit cost more, crop prices are lower-because the same program gives $50,000 to Farmer Brown, Inc...
...Representative from Arizona...
...Yet Sunkist itself invoked the citrus marketing orders to enforce cartel discipline on competitors who threatened to take an increasing share of Sunkist’s market...
...down the road...
...Even after your short exposure to this question, you should have learned that these are highly complex matters on which competent scientists can legitimately differ...
...Finally, what about the argument advanced by Mr...
...The government then stored the excess or “dumped” it abroad...
...Small farmers do have a problem, one they share with many other American citizens: low income...
...I suspect that by a “free market” Mr...
...We intend to continue to get the very best advice we can from non-industry scientists to supplement our own experts...
...A sudden end to price supports, production controls, and government purchases would indeed have caused a catastrophic drop in prices...
...The author gives the impression that the entire Right To Read program was wrapped up in the National Reading Center...
...A genuine free market would eliminate the big corporations’ unfair advantages, giving small farmers a chance to thrive...
...As rural sociologist Charles M. Hardin puts it, “The windfalls to the wealthy may well be politically sustained by the pittances to the poor...
...Yet by raising land prices and attracting “tax farmers” the programs quietly take more from the small farmer than they give him...
...I was about to write and apologize to all the taxpayers unto posterity for fathering the “Udall Amendment” and bringing on all of its evil consequences, until I read a piece by Milton Friedman who says that the best way to fight inflation is to have more escalator clauses and other types of “Udall Amendments...
...To set the record straight, the NRC was a very small segment of the Right To Read effort...
...For example, marketing order legislation ostensibly empowered small growers to organize against the kind of large packing, houses that dominate the Sunkist citrus coop...
...S. P. MARLAND, Jr...
...They must be more efficient to survive at all in the face of the big corporations’ government-granted advantages in farm subsidy programs and tax loopholes...
...Perhaps we could call it “income insurance...
...The editor replies : We would hardly criticize Squibb’s determination to obtain the best medical advice...
...Stagflat ion I read with a good deal of interest your October piece, “The Great Stagflation Machine” [by James Fallows], and you make one hell of a persuasive case, as well as writing in a most entertaining way...
...More than that, such reforms would lead many big corporations to sell off their holdings, while many small and mediumsized farmers would actually return to the land...
...MORRIS K. UDALL Washington, D. C. Morris Udall is a U.S...
...Butz means something different, perhaps a market in which big corporations can freely invoke government power to clobber the competition...
...In September the OE announced a nationwide search to identify, validate, and disseminate as many as 25 top reading programs so that all schools and communities can take advantage of their successes...
...As Mr...
...Furthermore, yo u unquestionably accepted the negative opinion on MysteclinF reportedly rendered by a Food and.Drug Administration advisory panel...
...But it is disingenuous to claim that the Mysteclin-F case-in which Squibb retained the dean of Harvard Medical School, who had not himself participated in the drug trials and who had no special expertise on the topic, to endorse the drug before the government panel-fits the category of enlisting “the best medical counsel to help them develop and review their products...
...These special favors also inflate the price of land, further injuring small farmers who must buy land to enter farming or expand operations-since the banks give them credit only on unfavorable terms if at all...
...We tried to explain to your reporter in some detail that the Mysteclin-F matter, like so many other issues of drug efficacy, involved complex questions of benefits versus risks, questions on which medical experts could legitimately disagree.We earnestly endeavored to convey our point of view-totally disregarded in your articlethat pharmaceutical companies had a right, indeed a duty, to retain the best possible medical counsel to help them develop and review their products...
Vol. 5 • December 1973 • No. 10
