_The Public's Share of Medical Research_ 
By Fazlur Rahman. 
 
A 42-year-old woman with ovarian cancer has been in and out of the 
hospital for months. Her course is complicated by anemeia, which 
requires frequent blood transfusions. But now she is experiencing 
debilitating side effects from the repeated use of blood. 
 
She does not need to go through these ordeals. Erythropoietin (EPO), a 
product of genetic engineering, could treat her anemia. In the past, 
after taking the EPO for a few weeks, she improved. But then she had 
to stop. Her health insurer refused to cover her EPO treatment, and 
because of its high cost she could not afford it. As a school teacher, 
she has too much money to qualify for financial assistance but too 
little to pay for her therapy. 
 
Like many other drugs created through genetic engineering, EPO is far 
too expensive. The manufacturers understandably claim they are 
entitled to a fair return on their investments. But their notion of 
what is fair is open to debate. 
 
Basic biomedical research has long been heavily subsidized by United 
States taxpayers. The Federal Government spends billions for the 
National Institutes of Health and gives numerous grants to 
universities to further research. High-tech pharmaceuticals owe their 
origin largely to these investments and to Government scientists. 
 
The public has earned the right to buys the products at a reasonable 
price. Already, about a dozen DNA-technology drugs are in the market; 
21 other  genetically engineered medicines are awaiting F.D.A. 
approval. ore than 85 others --- treatments for various ailments 
including cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, strokes and blood clots 
-- are undergoing human trials. 
 
Genetically engineered compounds are not the only ones that are 
high-priced. One monthly injection of carboplatinum, an anticancer 
agent, may cost $1,000; and a single capsule of VP-16, another 
antitumor medication, costs $40. And they have to be taken for months 
to achieve any benefit. Surely, the $36 billion pharmaceutical 
industry has room for easing prices on some products. 
 
As a practicing physician, I wish I had better treatments for cancer 
patients. But what good is a superdrug if its cost is out of reach of 
our patients? 
 
The Human Genome Project has embarked on an effort to map all human 
genes. At a cost of $3 billion over 15 yeas, this effort could exceed 
in scope the Apollo moon-landing program. Year from now, when it 
brings cures, we should remember that our citizens funded the project. 
 
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New York Times, Sunday, April 26, 1992, page F13 
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...and of course it is not just the Human Genome Project in the future 
but in currently existing medicine that there is the public-subsidy, 
private-profit syndrome, as Fazlur points out. Z magazine (especially 
Michael Albert) has more on critiques of Capitalism, about which a 
discussion with more examples in gen.socialism would be nice some day.