Eleanor Clift - A Reminder of Government’s Role

Nice article from Ms. Clift.

A Reminder of Government’s Role

Now is the time for Obama to champion the good that government does for Americans.

By Eleanor Clift

An angry minority refuses to recognize Barack Obama, the winner of last year's election, is president of the country, and not just leader of a political party they don't support. Americans have always had a healthy skepticism of government, but the characterization of Obama as a secret socialist bent on dismantling freedom is so far from reality that the White House was slow to take it seriously.

Now Obama is paying the price. Support for health-care reform has dropped precipitously, taking with it Obama's job approval, 52 percent in the latest Pew Research Center poll, and sparking panic among Democrats over next year's congressional elections. If the president whose party is in power falls below 53 percent, history tells us that the toll in House seats could be substantial—20 or more—recalling 1994, the last time health-care reform topped the agenda, when Republicans picked up 54 seats in the wake of Hillary Clinton's failed effort.

Incredibly, insurance companies are portrayed as the victims should Obama manage to wrest from a chorus of critics a public option that would allow Americans to choose a bare-bones, low-cost insurance option. There are some things that only government can do, or will do, and Obama should stop trying to appease his critics and take them on instead. The antigovernment fervor that propels Republicans began with Ronald Reagan in 1980, when he proclaimed in his Inaugural Address that "in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Obama's election should have signaled the end of three decades of conservative dogma. Instead he and too many Democrats have been intimidated into mimicking the GOP and accepting watered-down reform on the altar of bipartisanship.

It's time to call the bluff of the cheap-shot artists who demean government. The benefits of federal intervention touch every American—Social Security, Medicare, and fire and police services, which are all descendents of socialism. I was reminded of the positive role of government on a recent visit to Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., 50 miles from Washington. Fort Detrick is best-known for its role in anthrax testing in the months after the 9/11 attacks, but its history as a resource for scientific and medical research is rooted in President Nixon's 1971 speech, delivered at the fort, in which he launched the war on cancer and converted what was then a biological-warfare facility into a cancer-research center.

The war is far from won, of course, and David Newman, who heads the National Cancer Institute's Natural Products Branch, which is housed behind the security fence at Fort Detrick, is candid when he says, "We know less about a lot more." Four decades ago, when Nixon put down the government's marker, it was thought that cancer was a single disease. Now we know it is many different diseases, and researchers are working to customize anticancer treatments the way they did the AIDS cocktail that has been so successful in curbing the ravages of that disease. Newman introduces himself and the researchers he leads as "Uncle Sam's nonprofit pharmaceutical house." More than half of all drugs in use as cancer agents have been through his shop at some level, either in discovery, preclinical, or clinical trials. Every drug is given a Therapeutic Index (TI), which measures the ratio between risk and benefit, between a drug's ability to help a patient versus its ability to kill that patient. The ideal number is 10, but drugs have been approved with a TI as low as 3. To put that in perspective, Newman says aspirin has a TI over 50, meaning an average-size person would have to swallow at least 50 to induce a lethal effect.

Newman says what he does in the service of Uncle Sam is something the big drug companies no longer do, which is basic research focused on plant and marine samples gathered from around the world. To make his point, he opens one of many large freezers that line a corridor and pulls out bags of colorful coral along with a dark green starfish. He explains that these once living things from the ocean are crushed into powder and tested for anticancer properties. Sixty percent of drugs today either came directly from nature or were derived from it, but the pharmaceutical industry has all but abandoned the kind of foraging that's done by the government. "There's no way this would ever be done by industry," says Newman.

It's a matter of math. According to Newman—a refugee from the pharmaceutical industry, where he spent 25 years—the big drug companies don't do this research anymore because it takes too long and the payoff is uncertain. "They're all looking for the next billion-dollar drug, the female Viagra," he says. Decisions are based on the likely return on investment, not necessarily what might be best in the long-term interest of the country.

That's the trade-off throughout society, which is why we should be grateful that we don't have a purely capitalist system, and why Obama should stand up and fight for the balance that only government can provide.

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