if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
The Power of Greed
by Lee
The other day Andrew Sullivan posted an update on his HIV status (which he does from time to time) and he repeated his often-stated belief that the free market demand for pharmaceuticals is what is keeping him alive.
[A]lthough basic scientific research must be funded by government, the “evil” pharmaceutical companies are, in fact, among the most beneficent organizations in the history of mankind and their research in the last couple of decades will one day be recognized as the revolution it truly is. Yes, they’re motivated by profits. Duh. That’s the genius of capitalism - to harness human improvement to the always-reliable yoke of human greed. Long may those companies prosper. I owe them literally my life.
I wanted to follow up on his thought. July 2 was my father’s birthday. Had he lived he would have been 65 this year. For those of you who might be new to the blog, my father died after undergoing an operation where he had his heart removed, after which it was replaced by an experimental artificial heart. He was only the 12th person to ever get one of these devices, and as his surgeon told us, he was the healthiest person it had ever been put into. His prognosis was as good as for any previous patient. Once he agreed to the surgery all of his medical care was paid for by the heart company. What was paid for?
First there was the team of surgeons and surgical staff, among the best in the world. After the surgery he had his own private room in intensive care. While he was in intensive care he had a team of four nurses who were dedicated solely to his care. He had a team of doctors who monitored his progress around the clock. There was also a team of engineers at the home office of the heart company (which was in another state) who were monitoring the function of the heart in real-time over the internet. There were his medications, his food, and all of the other fees and costs associated with his care. And all of this went on for three months.
Now, anyone who has ever had to go into hospital for routine surgery and seen a bill for $10,000 or so can begin to appreciate the cost of his care. It was in the millions. And this does not count the tens of millions of dollars and decades of research into artificial heart technology that this company has invested so far. My father was the 12th patient, so there were 11 people before him, and there were 14 total, meaning there were two afterwards. Most did not live as long as he did, but two of them lived quite a bit longer; one even went home. My dad was not that fortunate, and for a number of reasons his body never came around after the surgery. The artificial heart worked perfectly, at least from an engineering standpoint.
Eventually the artificial heart will become a reality. Within my lifetime artificial hearts will become as routine as heart bypass operations are today. I’ve seen one of these hearts, held it in my hands. It’s an astonishing marvel of technology. The company had to develop a new kind of plastic to manufacture it, as well as a new type of fabric that could be sutured to and graft with human skin. The level of engineering is simply astonishing. And all this takes money, lots of it. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. In our old age we will all benefit from the sacrifice of my father, just like he benefitted from the men who went before him. Right now there is a critical shortage of donor hearts for transplants. How critical?
Each year, about 16,000 Americans under age 55—and 40,000 under age 65—could benefit from a heart transplant. However, because of the shortage of donated hearts, many people who need a heart transplant die while waiting for one. As of December 26, 2003, 3,591 people in the United States were waiting for a heart transplant, 271 of them younger than 18 years of age. (Link)
Despite public awareness campaigns, not enough people sign up for organ donation programs. So, what will address this shortfall? Technology. Companies that are willing to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to develop these products and bring them to market. And what forces drive them to do so? Three things.
1) There is a need.
2) There are smart people with ideas on how to meet that need.
3) And there is a lot of profit to be made selling the device once it is developed.
My point is simple. There is a reason that there are only a handful of countries on the planet where technology such as this is being developed. Medical technology is still one area where America leads the world, and it is because of the market forces that drive our health care system. Without the profit motive, this company would not be in business. The need would still be there. The smart people would still have the ideas. But the billionaires with the big checkbooks would have no interest in funding a venture with no chance of profit.
When the artificial heart is developed, I have absolutely no doubt that immediately the Michael Moore types will begin decrying the “culture of corporate greed” because some people who need this technology will not get it. Not only is this attitude short-sighted, it makes me physically ill. The people who cared for my father, who came to love him like my family did, who cried with true grief when he died… they are not heartless corporate whores. They are people who have devoted their life to healing the sick, to going where medical science has never gone before, and to use technology to meet a pressing need and save lives, so that fathers will get to see their sons become fathers themselves, and those newborn children will get to know the wonderful men who are their grandfathers. But all of these good intentions mean absolutely nothing without a free market framework to drive this development. Good intentions don’t develop artificial hearts, hundreds of millions of dollars does.
My father was one of the unlucky ones. He didn’t make it. But he most definitely did not die for nothing. Had he lived, the thanks for his miracle would have gone not only to the doctors and nurses and engineers who kept him alive, but also to the greedy, check-writing venture capitalist who funded the whole thing. And when the artificial heart is a reality, every person whose life is saved should thank not only the medical team, or the men like my father who went before them, but the guy with the checkbook.
Gordon Gekko said it best: “Greed, for want of a better word, is good. Greed works.”
Update: And if you’re not an organ donor, take five minutes and become one. Seriously, if you’re dead, what the hell do you need any of that stuff for? You could save the lives of multiple people. Wouldn’t your death be easier for your loved ones to take, knowing you had helped others to live? Become a donor. Do it now, before you forget. And sign your family up, too. I’ve been a donor since I was 16. There are teenagers out there who need teenage-sized hearts and organs, too. (Organ volume is critical. A big guy like me would need a big heart for a transplant. And the heart from a big guy like me won’t fit into the chest cavity of a teenage girl. All sizes and ages of organs are needed.)
Talk it over with your family and sign them up. People’s lives depend on it. Do it today.
Comments
I agree with all of the above Lee and extending the point even further, there would be far smaller shortages of donor organs if they were allowed to be bought and sold. Walter Williams has written about this.
All right you talked me into it. Everything besides my enormous male genital, Oh and my eyes, how will I ever be able to see the mortician raping my corpse?
Speaking of Gordon Gekko, did anyone catch the quote from Yale’s
new business-school dean Joel Podolsky: “Gordon Gekkos need not apply”.
How long before they change their name from Yale school of Management
to Yale School of Centralized Planning?
It’s great that your father was treated so well in his clinical trial, Lee. I fully support anyone who volunteers for a trial, as long as it’s properly run and your father understood all the risks.
Now if only someone greedy would put some money into funding a clinical trial for TB vaccines (40 are currently looking for a sponsor)?
Oops, no money in that, is there? Most of the people who have TB are are poor. Might have to depend on charity? Or (God forbid) governments. Perhaps we might consider that a multiple approach - capitalism along with government support, along with as much charity as we can put together, would work better. But as long as private enterprise leads the charge, we will never reach the people who most need healthcare - those who can least afford it (and remember, when we leave infectious disease, it comes back and hurts us. This is not a remote problem).
And don’t forget the story of Ornidyl - more than 500,000 Africans a year now have a cure for Sleeping Sickness largely because Western women don’t want facial hair. When Aventis abandoned the patent (it was unprofitable - most countries couldn’t afford the 600 dollar a patient asking price), the only solution was to go back to injecting Melarsoprol (mainly arsenic) straight into the veins, killing 10% and maiming another 10% for life (not to mention that about 25% late stage cases of Sleeping Sickness are now Melarsoprol-resistant) but it was still better than the death rate from the disease. Until it turned out that the active ingredients also stopped facial hair growth, and Bill & Melinda came through with some green, it really wasn’t looking like Ornidyl was not one of capitalism’s finest moments.
Five years of no drug at 150,000+ (and that’s only what was recorded) deaths a year, and we begin to have a figure that approaches your phantom DDT-ban induced malaria death toll.
Except this one is real.
I agree with all of the above Lee and extending the point even further, there would be far smaller shortages of donor organs if they were allowed to be bought and sold.
You beat me to it. I was thinking the exact same thing while I was reading this article.
I agree with all of the above Lee and extending the point even further, there would be far smaller shortages of donor organs if they were allowed to be bought and sold.
So how would you deal with a situation where people are kidnapped and perhaps murdered to satisfy the needs of an international organ donor market? Or maybe someone gives up their life to supply organs to a rich westerner in order to feed his/her family?
This is the primary reason why it has been kept illegal up to now - not that it has completely wiped it out. I know of someone who woke up without a kidney after a wild night out in India (I don’t know how much good the old kidney will do the new owner, either).
In our old age we will all benefit from the sacrifice of my father, just like he benefitted from the men who went before him.
I’m counting on a lot of medical technology for when I get older.
Did you know Charles Lindbergh help pioneer one of the first artificial heart prototypes? The research goes way back.
There are some states that are moving towards a “presumed consent” approach that would legally “recognize” ytour intent to be an organ donor if nothing in writing exeisted that would lead contrary to that position.
More importantly, dead people cannot posess property and exercise rights except where the state has made dispensatiosn for the alienation of property to heirs upon death. I humbly submit that once you’re dead, you may not exercise the right to yuour corpse, nor can your family ergo: mandatory organ donation.
There are some states that are moving towards a “presumed consent” approach that would legally “recognize” ytour intent to be an organ donor if nothing in writing exeisted that would lead contrary to that position.
This is how France does it, and I think it’s a good idea. But I don’t think that any law passed in this regard will be deemed constitutional. There are numbers of religions and the link that decry organ donation, and I think that presumed donation would be struck down as soon as an organ was taken from someone whose religious beliefs would have otherwise prevented him from being a donor.
But I agree, it’s definitely the best way to go about it.
So how would you deal with a situation where people are kidnapped and perhaps murdered to satisfy the needs of an international organ donor market? Or maybe someone gives up their life to supply organs to a rich westerner in order to feed his/her family?
If legalized, a great number of organs would enter the market, thus bringing the price down to very competitive levels; therefore providing ample levels of relatively inexpensive;legally acquired organs. This would effectively eliminate the black market for organs and not make it worth while for the criminal element to murder individuals for their organs.
This is one of the most basic laws of economics. The more readily available something is relative to demand, the lower the cost of that item is.
Look at prohibition, when alcohol was scarce and illegal, the price went through the roof, and many Italians, Jews, and Irish killed each other over the profits that came with liquor sales, while, now that alcohol is sold legally, the supply is plentiful, the price is reasonable, and no liquor store owners are killing their competition. Same basic principle.
Whenever I hear about how greedy corporate pharmaceutical companies are, I always wonder where the non-profit socialist driven counterparts are.
Where are the pharmaceutical companies funded by democrat millionaires, run by doctors and scientists eager to accept lower pay for their work to humanity?
Don’t you think there is enough money and talent on the left to come up with a clinical trial for TB vaccinations? Those same people who decry companies for advancing technology for a profit. Perhaps if they were willing to step up to the plate and put their time and money where their mouth was instead of insisting on how other companies should run their businesses, then they might have an argument.
Just a reminder to everyone—you don’t have to be dead to make a life-giving donation. Yes, it’s all about blood. If you are a healthy adult, your blood is needed. You can give just once or twice a year or you can give as often as every eight weeks. You’ll feel really good about yourself when you do it—and maybe save a life—all that plus juice and cookies, too!
nice post
I can proudly say that I am an organ donor. I dont care what is donated, because like you said, once Im dead Im not going to need it.
Agreed, but i dont think anyone would want my eyes or ears........
Right now I have somebody else’s ligament in my right knee holding it all together.
The problem with Gordon Gecko is that he was a socialist charicature of an American capitalist. Real life industrialists don’t think it’s a “zero sum game” - only an “intellectual” would operate on such a brain dead assumption.
Remember, socialists don’t really understand how wealth is created, they think it is all stolen from others.
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But Lee, when the Nuclear disaster of 2036 comes around, I’m gonna need all my parts intact if I’m to rise w/ the rest of the zombie hordes.