Drug Industry Has a Muscular Lobby Tries to Shape Nation's Bioterror Plan

By Leslie Wayne and Melody Petersen

While the government has struggled to make sure the nation will have enough drugs to treat biological weapons that were largely hypothetical a few months ago, drug companies have managed to stave off many actions that would harm them, like violating patents or forcing them to supply free drugs.

As that success shows, the pharmaceutical lobby, which represents the nation's biggest drug makers, from Eli Lilly to Pfizer to Merck, is both large and politically adroit and, if anything, more sophisticated than when it gained fame in the early 1990's for helping to defeat the Clinton administration health plan.

It has more lobbyists than there are members of Congress - 625 who are registered.

It had a combined lobbying and campaign contribution budget in 1999 and 2000 of $197 million, larger than any other industry.

Now it is harnessing those resources to influence major policy decisions being made by the Bush administration that may well influence public health issues and industry profitability for years to come - much to the dismay of many consumer groups and others.

In recent weeks, the chief executives and other top executives of Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bayer, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson, along with trade association officials, have been meeting regularly with Bush cabinet members.

On one occasion, with executives from other industries, pharmaceutical executives met with President Bush in New York to discuss the administration's response to terrorism.

Drug company executives have offered to send scores of industry scientists, now on their payrolls, to work in government agencies in what the industry calls a gift to the nation, but critics say it is both a conflict of interest and a way for the industry to get a toehold in government.

In return, at these top-level meetings, industry executives and lobbyists are seeking exemption from antitrust regulations, reduction of the timetable for getting new drugs to market for treating the ills of biological warfare, and immunity from lawsuits for any vaccines they develop to combat bioterrorism.

The industry's efforts to present its proposals as patriotic gestures may mask an effort to increase its power in Washington and to improve its image while still protecting its financial interests. Critics also say consumer groups and executives from generic drug companies, which make cheaper copies of well-known drugs, have been conspicuously absent from any administration meetings.

There is no lobby in Washington as large, as powerful or as well-financed as the pharmaceutical lobby.

Battle-honed over a number of health care initiatives that began with the creation of the Medicare program in the 1960's, the industry spent $177 million on lobbying in 1999 and 2000 - a good $50 million more than its nearest rivals, the insurance and telecommunications industries.

Thanks to Washington's well-oiled revolving door between government and business, the industry is able to claim friends in especially high places.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is the former chief executive of the drug maker G. D. Searle, for example, and Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the White House budget director, is a former Eli Lilly executive.

Even more important, more than half the drug industry's 625 registered lobbyists are either former members of Congress or former Congressional staff members and government employees, according to a report from Public Citizen.

One of the industry's staunchest critics, James Love, the director of the Consumer Project on Technology, who works to get low-priced AIDS drugs to poor countries, called the industry's drive for government contracts for medicines against bioterrorism "a feeding frenzy."

"They are putting together another gravy train to cash in on some big government contracts," Mr. Love said.

With Americans spending more than $100 billion on drugs last year - double the amount of 1990 - and with public pressure increasing for pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices, the companies concluded quickly that they had to become an active participant in the resolution of the nation's crisis.

Executives have gone to great lengths to say that they are not going to profit from it. They point to the fact that Bayer, under pressure from the government, reduced the price for government purchases of its anti-anthrax antibiotic, Cipro.

At every opportunity, they have also noted that they plan to give away additional drugs and vaccines to the government fight bioterrorism - albeit with some important strings attached. The medications would be made available only if the government agreed to speed the process that would allow existing drugs to treat anthrax and only if there was a national emergency.

The drug industry needs this political capital both now and the future - especially when it comes to patents. For the industry, the protection of patents - which give companies monopoly control over the drugs they bring to market for a number of years - is basic to their existence. For them, any threats to that protection, even at a time of national crisis, is a clarion call to action.

"This is a huge issue to them," said William Nixon, chief executive of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, which battles the large drug companies with a budget of about $2 million a year. "They will do everything in their power to maintain their monopoly."

Companies are fighting so hard to protect their patent rights in part because they have so few drugs with large potential that will move from development to the market over the next several years.

By 2011, brand-name drugs with more than $40 billion in annual sales are expected to go off patent; they can then be sold by generic drug makers at prices of, say, 70 percent less.

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved just 27 new drugs, down from 35 the year before and about half the number approved in 1996. To prevent huge drops in revenue, drug makers need to hold on to their patent protections for as long as possible - or even extend them further.

At the moment, industry lobbyists are swarming through the halls of Congress because the House is about to consider a Senate-passed bill to extend the industry's monopoly patents by six months on many existing drugs - a measure that could reap billions for the industry but cost consumers.

And there may have been another motive for the corporate offers. Drug makers depend on patents to help them recoup their research and testing costs, but once those costs are recovered, the high prices they charge for patented drugs give them operating margins that are among the highest in corporate America.

In the last few days, as Congress has debated a patents measure, the industry has been pulling out the stops to renew a law that provides the pharmaceutical industry with a six-month extension on patents in return for the drug makers' agreement to do more testing of drugs for pediatric use.

Consumer groups say the bill would require the drug companies to do little new research but would cost consumers $14 billion over what generic equivalents would cost. On Cipro alone, for instance, Public Citizen, the consumer group, estimates that Bayer would get an additional $357 million in business that it could have otherwise lost to cheaper generic drugs.

Fighting the hardest is Bristol-Myers, which is also seeking a three- year extension on the use of Glucophage, a diabetes medicine, based on studies of the drugs on children. Analysts estimate that the company could reap an additional $1 billion in sales for every six months the patent is extended.

The New York Times November 4, 2001

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:

As the late Senator Evrett Dirksen from Illinois was fond of saying when he was referencing the Defense Department budget, a billion here, a billion there, and before you know it, you are talking real money.

100 billion dollars is certainly not pocket change and it can yield enormous amounts of influence. This is easy to see when you understand that there are more drug company lobbyists than there are members of Congress and that this lobby is the most powerful of any in the US.

Numbers are one thing, but these lobbyists are not just anyone. They are actually former members of Congress or government employees who know the system and know how to manipulate it their advantage.

You can rest assured that the drug companies will manipulate the current situation with bioterrorism to extend the penetration of drugs in the medical market.

They can do that, BUT you don't have to cooperate. If you follow the eating plan and address your emotional issues (EFT), drink enough water, and get enough exercise and sleep, you can virtually eliminate the need for medications in your life.

From my perspective that is one of the best health insurance policies you can have. Ideally you should have a catastrophic insurance policy like I do. The deductible is $10,000, but the annual premium is only $200. After a few years the savings in premiums more than compensates for paying the large deductible should you need it.

Considering I have had this policy for 20 years, I have saved over $30,000 in unnecessary insurance premiums. However, these types of insurance policies maybe hard to find. I was able to obtain mine as a health care professional.

Related Articles:

Drug Industry Stalks the US Corridors of Power

The Pharmaceutical Industry -- To Whom Is It Accountable? 6/24/00

The Pharmaceutical Industry -- To Whom Is It Accountable? 11/26/00

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