Letters to the Editor
Even Bulwarks Can Get Better
I’ve really enjoyed reading the Fredericksburg Advance and watching it grow and succeed. I've emailed certain articles to friends and family and encouraged them to sign up and subscribe to it themselves.
But while the writing is usually good, the latest episode of the podcast started off borderline incoherent.
The episode began with some complaints. You’ve apparently heard enough wailing and gnashing of teeth over the outcome of the election and you’re over it.
While that’s an understandable reaction from a random citizen, it’s an unfortunate one from a journalist. The outcome of the election wasn’t surprising, but people are still going to have reactions to it. I would have thought that a journalist might be interested in covering the various ways people are responding to a significant political event instead of just complaining that some people are upset about it.
But never mind that, next it was time for an anecdote. Back in 1989 (a time so long ago that the current vice-president elect hadn’t even started kindergarten) a professor made a snide comment.
This event somehow got tied to the idea that now, 36 years later, we have a group of people who are, “disdainful, who have no respect for working class people, who have no respect for people who don’t have fancy academic degrees. You wonder why voters are angry? Why voters vote the way they do? That’s why.”
Voters have a myriad of reasons for why they vote the way that they do.
77 million Americans voted for Trump and 75 million Americans voted for Harris.
Sure, feeling like they were being looked down on might have been motivating to some folks.
Others might have concerns about inflation, or the border, or crime, or vaccines, or LGTB+ issues, etc. It’s worth finding out why people made a particular choice, but that seems like it would be done by asking them, not assuming that you already know.
The Fredericksburg Advance is a terrific bulwark against corruption and ignorance in our area. But almost everything has room for improvement. I hope that the podcast continues to get better.
Nancy Collins
Spotsylvania
Don’t Dismiss Healthcare Concerns
In 1923, Sir Frederick Banting, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of insulin, sold his patent on the drug to the University of Toronto for $1.00, allegedly saying; “Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world”.
Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, could have earned $7 billion had he patented his discovery.
Sally C. Pipes, president & CEO at the Pacific Research Institute, has written an op-ed published in today’s Free Lance-Star entitled “Keep your price controls off our weight-loss drugs”, in which she claims that “… price controls would destroy the incentive for scientists & drugmakers to develop new drugs”. Ms. Pipes is billed as a “health expert”, but apparently her only academic credentials in any field of medicine or public health are limited to an honorary PhD in public policy from Pepperdine University in 2018. She apparently has not studied medicine or public health at any of the nation’s recognized premier medical institutions such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, or Stanford, to name but a very few.
As of 2023 there are seven statin drugs, used to lower cholesterol, on the market, eleven angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, used in treatment of hypertension, twelve biologics aimed at psoriasis & four erectile dysfunction drugs. Do we really need so many in every class of drug? Each different drug costs money to research & develop, as companies seek to alter the basic compound enough to be able to patent something different. Does America truly need at least four drugs to treat ED?
Pay attention & you’ll notice that almost all the prescription drugs being advertised directly to patients on TV (“Ask your doctor if X is right for you!”) are to treat conditions that are not curable, but are likely life-long, meaning the patient will use the drug for a long time.
I am offended that Ms. Pipes implies that there are no more Bantings or Salks, physicians who develop treatments for the good of the patients rather than for the riches their discovery could provide. In America, health care is a business, as my colleague Dr. Brock has pointed out repeatedly, & businesses have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit, not a societal obligation to the public. I would expect, therefore, that a CEO such as Ms. Pipes would be opposed to governmental price caps on drugs.
Dr. Brock has stated that the response of America’s healthcare system to America’s patients is; “Dismissed”. I would suggest it is more akin to that of Queen Marie Antoinette, who when informed the peasants of Paris were starving for want of bread suggested; “Let them eat cake”. In October 1793 she may have regretted that remark. The furor surrounding the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO suggests Americans are not going to tolerate the gouging of the American “health care system”, including Big Pharm, much longer.
Donald E. Bley, MD
Fredericksburg
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Dr. Bley: Bravo and Thank You.