Medical care in America is excellent but expensive, with drug costs no exception to the general pattern. US pharmaceutical firms are leaders in innovation, but at a high price to consumers, who are increasingly aware that drug costs just over the border in Canada are considerably lower. When challenged on this, especially by the elderly, the drug companies reply that medicines cost a lot in America...because they have to: "It's all that research we do." No research, no new drugs, no pharmacological advances in the struggle with arthritis, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, heart disease, strokes, cancer and all the other common illnesses that can make old age miserable or short.

　　So is it just laboratory budgets and the salaries of scientists and technicians that explain the high prices? WashingtonPost editorial cartoonist Tom Toles thinks not. The rotund drug company executive opens the door to the Research Department to show us some busy corporate "researchers". What are they working on?

　　The first pointy-headed figure is devising the TV commercials that are the key feature of the extremely expensive advertising campaigns these firms now use to pitch drugs directly to consumers. The second is putting together a selection of "goodies for doctors" -- favors and services that will induce (i.e. bribe) physicians to prescribe their drugs regardless of cost. The third figure is studying the fees that companies pay to expensive law firms to fight for extension of patent rights on drugs; patents themselves also tend to keep prices high, in theory to reward inventors for the introduction of a useful new product. Last comes the researcher who studies how much money the firm should pay to the re-election campaigns of politicians in Congress insgroupsto guarantee that the laws serve the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

　　Pharmacological research is pointedly absent. This is an exaggeration on Toles' part, since these firms really do spend huge sums on science -- but promotional and legal expenses are, as Toles insists, far from negligible.