Technological Progress or Retreat: A New Year’s Resolution

“One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more,” writes former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse in his announcement that he has advanced-stage pancreatic cancer.

These words of appreciation for modern medicine’s many achievements and growing prospects come in an essay that reflects on a remarkable individual’s acknowledgement that every human being faces “a death sentence.” Sobering thoughts in the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day. And seemingly at odds with the promise of health improvements, overcoming diseases and creating cures.

Still, such technological and scientific successes are happening, not only in medical science, but in many areas, including semiconductor chips, energy (including nuclear) and advanced manufacturing.

For me, Mr. Sasse’s essay brought to mind several thoughts. First was a recent reminder of the state of the art in medical technology. This fall, I judged the semifinal round of healthcare contestants for the Cade Prize for Inventivity, sponsored by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention.

A contestant in this category was a startup that’s commercializing a discovery of follow-on use of an existing drug, mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. It causes a patient’s immune system to fight various types of cancer. The startup applies research from the University of Florida, where Mr. Sasse served as president, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The remarkable evidence was reported soon after the Cade contest.

The other Cade Prize semifinalists in this category were also remarkable. There were a novel regenerative therapy for glaucoma (the category winner) and a CRISPR application editing genes in transplant organs to remove viral infections and decrease organ rejections. These three discoveries and inventions represent just a few of the scientific leaps forward occurring across the country and beyond. The rate of progress is indeed “jawdropping.”

Second, Tomas Philipson’s December 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed "Biden’s IRA Is Harming Cancer Patients” highlights one of the most detrimental of the multiple harms the Biden-Sanders-Manchin “Inflation Reduction Act” has inflicted on our nation.

Mr. Philipson’s research findings show how the IRA’s government price controls, regulatory hurdles and other measures reduce follow-on discoveries and inventions that benefit cancer patients. To wit, the IRA’s drug-price-fixing disincentivizes biopharma research and development and innovation, as well as investment in related R&D and commercialization.

The IRA ties an anchor, which becomes progressively heavier year by year, to the heretofore “jawdropping” pace of medical progress and its wondrous health benefits Americans have enjoyed until now and would derive from foregone innovation. He notes how the IRA’s government interventions—in the name of lowering drug prices—lead to more human suffering and greater healthcare costs in the long term.

The Cade contestant’s follow-on use of COVID vaccine, an existing drug, is exactly the type of important medical progress the IRA places at risk and Mr. Philipson discusses. Misguided socialist and populist policymakers miss the forest for the trees by resisting repeal of the harmful IRA.

Also, some Trump administration policies and proposals fall into the same misguided rut as the IRA. “Most favored nation” reference pricing, patent valuation taxes, mandatory “affordability” clauses in federal technology licensing contracts, government expropriation of a share of research institutions’ patent licensing royalties, for instance. We all suffer from bad law and ideologues’ bad judgment.

The Small Business Administration’s chief counsel for advocacy responded to the Philipson op-ed in a letter to the editor. Casey Mulligan writes that “government-imposed price ceilings curtail investment in maintaining and improving the quality of consumer products.” This results in “fewer new drugs to improve health and longevity, and fewer discoveries of how to use existing medicines better.”

Mr. Mulligan adds that small businesses, including the nearly 3,000 small U.S. biotech firms, “are the least able to survive a policy that shortens effective patent lives and caps prices as their discoveries approach the market.” From his pen to the White House’s eyes.

My book To Invent Is Divine explains that secure ownership must be connected to creativity in order to foster human flourishing. Attenuated property rights, which U.S. intellectual property law is supposed to secure exclusively, do exactly what Mr. Philipson finds the IRA does to cancer drug development.

Reversing course on these wrong-headed policy fronts would be a highly constructive new year’s resolution—and to keep to it through the year and beyond.