The pharma-industry rationalizes its sinfully steep drug prices as a result of the high cost of developing drugs. If they charged less for their products, so their story goes, they'd be out of business and humanity would be on its way to extinction. Let's have a closer look at their story.

For one, humanity'd been around for a few million years before the pharma- industry came on stage without facing extinction. True, people did not live as long then as they do now, but the increase in general life expectancy has very little -- if anything -- to do with our high-priced drugs. It has been due largely to improved nutrition, to a better water supply, to better hygiene and above all to the reduction of infant mortality. If a few human beings die before they reach the age of one, the general average of life- expectancy takes a nose dive.

But the reduction of infant mortality from up to 200 to less than 10 for 1000 births has very little to do with expensive drugs. Cuba, a country that has virtually no access to these drugs, is right up there with the top twenty countries in the world, a notch or two above the United States of America. In some of the poorest developing countries (Tanzania, Tchad, Afghanistan) infant mortality is still around a 100. In Switzerland it is down to about 5.

Then there are groups of people whose general life expectancy is as good as that of the best countries though they use virtually no drugs at all. I have in mind the Hunza of North Eastern Pakistan and the Indians of Villacabamba in Peru. (See "National Geographic" of Jan. 1973). They live to a hundred and beyond, active and healthy, but their good health and their longevity have nothing to do with drugs and everything with a wholesome lifestyle.

Further, a Ralph Nader study has concluded that prescription drugs kill about 300,000 people a year in the USA. Are we paying through the nose for drugs that make huge profits for the their makers but kill? The real figure is probably much higher than 300,000. Since doctors are under no obligation to report drug deaths as such, many go unreported. Many, moreover, are likely to slip by unrecognized.

Finally, several -- if not most -- of the most outrageously expensive drugs were not developed by the pharma-industry but by public moneyin university research laboratories. Don't believe me? Check out what Ralph Nader and his people tell us at