So here's the situation confronting the drug firms: The drugs cost more to make, but they can't charge more for them. What do they do? Increasingly, the U.S. market is driving them toward drugs aimed at the diseases of richer, older Americans and away from antimicrobials, vaccines, and the like.

A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked Perfection.

This is really a twin tragedy both for the people who were misled over there and for those of us who were misled over here.

So here's the situation confronting the drug firms: The drugs cost more to make, but they can't charge more for them. What do they do? Increasingly, the U.S. market is driving them toward drugs aimed at the diseases of richer, older Americans and away from antimicrobials, vaccines, and the like.

Academic freedom really means freedom of inquiry. To be able to probe according to one's own interest, knowledge and conscience is the most important freedom the scholar has, and part of that process is to state its results.