I read with dismay Dr. Erik Steele’s column, “Reforming pharmaceutical bad boys” (BDN, Sept. 16). As a physician, he should know better. His column perpetuates several myths about the pharmaceutical industry.

First of all, drug companies have the highest profit margin of any American industry, even the oil industry. Their profits as a percentage of their sales are almost 20 percent. For comparison purposes, the median profit for all Fortune 500 companies is about 5 percent. That’s a lot of profit before we “risk killing the goose that keeps laying golden miracle drugs.”

Drug companies routinely state that it costs more than $800 million to bring a new drug to market. This is a gross exaggeration accomplished by the type of creative accounting that we are becoming all too used to with our corporations. An independent expert such as the watchdog organization Public Citizen estimates the cost to be about $110 million.

Medications cost significantly more in our country than any other industrialized country, almost 60 percent more than in Canada or England. Our drug companies argue that the burden of research and development for the world falls upon them. Again, closer examination reveals this to be a myth. European pharmaceuticals develop about the same number of new drugs a year but at a fraction of the cost. In addition, American drug companies enjoy large taxpayer subsidies.

Our patent law has also been perverted by the pharmaceutical industries to give them an unfair market advantage and a monopoly on new drugs that extends beyond the intended patent. Furthermore, most “new” drugs are really just variations of current medications with different delivery systems such as an extended-release product to simply extend patent protections.

The reason drugs cost more in America is simply greed. The pharmaceutical industry takes every opportunity to deceive the American people. They spend more on marketing their products than they do on research and development. They spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising campaigns such as “the bus from Canada” to attempt to discredit the Canadian system. We recently saw an example of this in Bangor this summer when the pharmaceutical industry financed a trip by the “busload” of a dozen or so Canadians (it must have been a short bus) to come to Bangor to purchase medications. The story was dutifully reported by the Bangor Daily News in spite of a number of inaccuracies provided by the pharmaceutical industry in its press release.

Although I appreciate Dr. Steele’s laundry list of deceptions and unethical practices by the pharmaceutical industry, it is only a partial list. It is naive to call our pharmaceutical industry a “free enterprise model.” It is equally naive to expect the industry to become ethical. The only reason for any possible change is due to the threat of government regulation. Finally, it is also naive to expect a coherent and affordable health care system without fair play by the pharmaceutical industry.

A more balanced and truthful assessment of not only the pharmaceutical industry but our entire health care system is needed, particularly by those in positions such as Dr. Steele. For more information about our failing health care system and solutions, please check out www.pnhp.org and http://www.healthcaremeltdown.org.

William R. Wood Jr., M.D. is a physician in Bangor.