Political Quotes

“Last week I made public a report from the General Accounting Office involving Taxil, which is the biggest selling cancer drug in history. This drug was developed largely by the taxpayers, with everything for support from the Pacific yew tree, which grows in my home State of Oregon, all the way to the work done at the National Cancer Institutes by Federal researchers, and has produced $9 billion in sales for Bristol-Myers with the Federal Government getting a return of about $35 million, about one half of 1 percent on the biggest selling cancer drug in history. In this report, the General Accounting Office documents that the Federal Government basically dropped the ball. Without going to price controls and regulations and things of this nature, with some modest steps, the Federal Government could have stood up for the taxpayers and the patients who cannot afford the medicine and gotten the drug to market quickly and also taken steps to make it affordable and to protect the taxpayers.”