Politicians wage broad wars on medicine to claim thin strips of ideological terrain. This would be good political theater if there weren't so many human victims.

Lower earnings announcements for the pharma sector last week stem from two provisions in the health reform legislation.

The pharmaceutical industry is headed toward a crisis. Its successes in improving health and prolonging life have made drug therapy essential to health care. But in virtually every nation, price controls and other regulation have undermined the profit incentive, causing a massive shift in research and development from Europe...

For the shift away from everyday drugs toward longshot, big-payoff remedies, you can thank regulators, insurers' reimbursement schemes, and the madness of tort litigation.

Congress is in the process of rewriting the United States' patent laws. Scientific and technological changes in virtually all markets have dramatically altered the patent system itself. Reacting to fears that patents and patent litigation could retard rather than support technological progress, legislators are poised to take action with the...

Politicians wage broad wars on medicine to claim thin strips of ideological terrain. This would be good political theater if there weren't so many human victims.

Politicians wage broad wars on medicine to claim thin strips of ideological terrain. This would be good political theater if there weren't so many human victims.

The disparate way that the Security and Exchange Commission has handled health care costs and global warming suggests that it is swayed by political pressure and the whims of special interest groups rather than substantiated evidence.