Letters to the editor

Winning the war

As Clifford May writes in Sunday’s Commentary column “Setting clear goals,” suppressing al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq “is the necessary precondition for all our other objectives.” We must “show we won’t be defeated militarily … [to facilitate] Iraq’s economic and political” goals.

The situation in Iraq, with particular attention to Baghdad, should be a candidate for a site-specific update of the Brezhnev Doctrine. That is, once any contested area comes under Iraqi government control, it must never be ceded back to the adversaries. Iraq must consolidate and maintain victories.

The Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seems to be on the correct intensive track. Baghdad can serve as a test case, and, once pacified, it must stay pacified. Iraq is in the “Israel zone” — that is, it cannot always consolidate gains, but it can hope to keep them at a more-or-less “manageable” level. From now on, Iraq and its allies must intensively manage gains. Maybe the war will not be won soon, but it must never be lost. After all, the war in Iraq is “not over ‘til it’s over.” And that’s defined by nurturing an allied victory.

ONA BUNCE

Bethesda

The FDA and drug safety

In their column “Streamlining drug approval” (Op-Ed, June 22), Robert Goldberg and Peter Pitts imply that patients should have to choose between safety and speedy access to new medications. No one knows better than patients with serious illnesses the importance of bringing drugs to market quickly, understanding that not every risk can be identified in advance.

However, what they also demand is sufficient information to be able to assess risks and benefits — which often means further testing of the drug after approval. The authors ignore the fact that the FDA has virtually no authority to compel drug manufacturers to continue to study the safety of products after they have been approved or to force changes to drug labels if dangerous side effects are uncovered.

Sensible, bipartisan solutions are being proposed in Congress that would give the FDA the ability to require additional testing of drugs when there are clear signals of safety problems.

In fact, these proposals actually could allow the FDA to approve drugs more quickly, knowing it will have the tools to continue watching for dangerous side effects once the drug is in the hands of patients.

Also, by giving the FDA the ability to force manufacturers to address safety concerns, we can avoid the worst possible outcome for everyone: pulling a drug from the market that could provide relief to millions of patients.

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