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Biotech / Medical : Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jackie who wrote (2316)	10/31/1998 11:29:00 AM
From: David Bogdanoff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4676

J; It makes antisense :) to compare the electronics products with the health industry, which is more of a service than a product. You can't even buy many drugs without a doctor's prescription, and an MD isn't going to write one unless he has a lot of legal protection, which is what happens when a drug gets an FDA approval. Not only doctors get protection, but pharmaceutical drug executives and shareholders. Want to imagine what would happen without the FDA doing its job? What does thalidomide mean to you? Then multiply that case many times because you would get many drugs on the market with unknown and dangerous side effects. Thalidomide was not approved by the FDA for the US and there were relatively few victims from its use in the US; the ones that we had were the result of purchases abroad by Americans. FDA regulations are not all bad news for business and investors. Think of the system as barriers to entry; once a company clears that barrier, it has some protection from competitors, at least until the patent runs out. David