Consider the clinicaltrials by which drugs are tested in human subjects.5 Before a new drug can enter the market, its manufacturer must sponsor clinicaltrials to show the Food and Drug Administration that the drug is safe and effective, usually as compared with a placebo or dummy pill. The results of all the trials (there may be many) are submitted to the FDA, and if one or two trials are positive—that is, they show effectiveness without serious risk—the drug is usually approved, even if all the other trials are negative.

Health care is a need; it's not a commodity, and it should be distributed according to need. If you're very sick, you should have a lot of it. If you're not sick, you shouldn't have a lot of it.

Brand-name drugs have no competition, since the government grants them very long, exclusive marketing rights.

The United States is the only advanced country that permits the pharmaceutical industry to charge exactly what the market will bear, whatever it wants.

There is something so biologically implausible that your attitude is going to cure a disease. Theres a tremendous arrogance to imagine that your mind is all that powerful.

In economic terms, health care is a highly successful industry - profitable, growing, and virtually recession-proof - but it's a massive burden on the rest of the economy.

Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.