Letters to the editor

Biologics

The Biotechnology Industry Organization is actively involved in the dialogue about how best to create a pathway for the approval of follow-on biologics that emphasizes patient safety and incentives for continued biomedical innovation (“Drug makers consider biological market,” Business, Tuesday). This discussion is too important to be misdirected by fiction masquerading as fact.

Our organization found that the study produced by Express Scripts referenced in the article, which projected savings in health-care costs purportedly created by a market for follow-on biologics, has been shown to be unscientific and unreliable. This study contains numerous flawed assumptions about critical factors, such as patent expirations and market penetration, which led to a dramatically inflated savings estimate.

A more recent report by Avalere Health predicted a savings to the federal government of $3.6 billion over the next decade from follow-on biologics — approximately 5 percent of the $71 billion savings overestimate presented by Express Scripts.

JAMES C. GREENWOOD

President and CEO

Biotechnology Industry Organization

Washington

Sexeducrats’ selective tolerance

David Limbaugh’s excellent column “Lesson in selective tolerance” (Commentary, Saturday) addresses a serious threat to free speech from the left and demonstrates the pervasive intolerance of radical homosexuals toward anyone who doesn’t agree with their agenda. That threat is by no means unique to California. Look no further than Montgomery County public schools in our own back yard.

The newly approved eighth- and 10th-grade sex-ed curriculum is a textbook example of selective intolerance and suppression of free speech. Any negative attitudes about non-heterosexuals are labeled “homophobic,” and negative comments are described as “harassment,” “intolerance” or worse. Students’ questions or comments that are considered to deviate from the pro-homosexual agenda of the curriculum are either not permitted or ignored.

Further, beyond the sex-ed curriculum’s insistence on only its own biased approach, some teachers and officials have encouraged students to trash brochures mandated for school distribution by a U.S. federal court simply because the brochures point out that some homosexuals have been able to overcome their same-sex feelings.

By example, the school system is demonstrating gross intolerance toward those who do not share its view of homosexuality while somehow expecting students to appreciate and understand tolerance, acceptance and empathy even toward those with whom they may have a deep-seated, fundamental disagreement based on belief and experience.

MICHELLE TURNER

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