Political Quotes

“If you take this market on either cancer or AIDS drugs, just those segments or families of drugs, there is not a single cancer drug today or AIDS drug on the market that was not directly developed with assistance from the United States Government, NIH; and it was not directly developed with the tax dollars from the taxpayer; and yet the only benefit of those drugs, obviously besides using them and saving lives, the American consumer, be they the elderly or just families and children, they pay, as the gentleman noted, three times more than do people in Germany, France, and other major industrialized countries; and yet we were the ones who developed it. We were the ones who gave the tax dollars to develop this. We also not only gave it from the NIH direct funding, using tax dollars to fund it, but on the back end these companies write off their R&D. So we have to make up that loss in the tax revenue pool so they can develop these drugs; and as I think the gentleman noted in his statistics, we then get a minuscule amount of return. Actually in the private sector money like that is called dumb money. That is how they refer to it. It is foolish money. It is called dumb money.”