Letters
to the editor
Illegal
differences
New
Immigration Propaganda Misses the Point"
[Oct. 30] is nothing more than a propaganda
piece itself. Daniel Frias consistently
accuses California of being anti-immigrant,
which is a complete distortion of the viewpoint
that many Californians hold. Legislation
such as Prop. 187 is not anti-immigrant.
Rather, it is anti-illegal immigrant. Frias
accuses the "right wing republicans"
of being anti-immigrants, while completely
ignoring the fact that they are fighting
illegal immigration.
Frias
refuses to use the term illegal once in
his piece, and simply groups all immigrants,
be they legal or illegal, into one category.
This is an insult to all the people who
took the time to come to the United States
under legal circumstances. No one is stopping
immigrants from "searching for the
American Dream," provided they are
here legally. Until people like Frias learn
to admit the difference between legal and
illegal immigration, the state will continue
to have serious problems.
-- Matthew Wallin
More
for research
When
I read this article I was utterly disgusted.
The author(s) openly declared that drug
companies should never do research again.
This is completely absurd. If it weren't
for the research done by drug companies,
the vast majority of these drugs wouldn't
exist. Granted the elderly wouldn't be complaining
about drug prices, but that's because they
wouldn't have anything to help them period.
I
understand that drugs can be expensive,
but almost all of their profits go back
towards research. It's good business practice
for them to do so. If they invest more into
research, they will discover new drugs and
make more money as well as advance pharmaceutical
science. Nowadays we have drugs to treat
illnesses that would have meant either permanent
disability, or certain death, and we have
drug companies to thank for that.
If
we want to make drug prices go down there
is a way. We must urge the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office to extend the maximum length
of patents for these drugs which currently
stand at a meager seven years. Basically
these drug companies have seven years before
the generic companies can legally rip off
their drug and sell it as their own. This
means that drug companies only have seven
years to make up the average cost of $800
million to break even on their investment
(Pfizer). This can become extremely hard
because many of these drugs are used by
a very small percentage of the population.
By extending the length of the patents these
companies don't have to make as much money
per dose to make the profits they need to
survive.
-- Scott Abling, chemistry major
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