US drug industry's claims of other countries “freeloading” are a myth

A member of George Bush's Presidential Business Commission—a group of business and professional people who are advising the president on the next election—has launched a scathing attack on the US pharmaceutical industry and on the industry's claims that other countries are damaging drug development by paying lower prices.

Delivering the David Rogers lecture at Cornell Medical College in New York last month, bioethicist Donald Light said no evidence existed to support the view that European nations were “freeloading” and that the current US attempts to raise prices through free-trade agreements with other countries were simply designed to boost profits, not research and development.