One of the biggest factors fueling the angst over drug prices in the U.S. is that some older medicines that should be sold cheaply as generics are still priced very high, often owing to a dwindling number of generic competitors and the rising cost of producing these drugs.

Scott Gottlieb

Covid spreads too easily to think it can be confined to the young.

Scott Gottlieb

Covid is likely to persist once its pandemic phase has passed and circulate each winter alongside the flu. Even after more of us contract coronavirus infection and develop immunity to it or even after an effective vaccine arrives, some people will still get very sick.

Scott Gottlieb

Confronting a dangerous pandemic requires containing spread wherever it is reasonably possible. Sensible measures such as universal masking, testing and widespread and rapid contact tracing can help. The best way to protect the vulnerable is to try to protect everyone.

Scott Gottlieb

Limiting Covid's impact requires us to think differently about confronting respiratory pathogens in the winter.

Scott Gottlieb

Americans broadly consent to funding clinical research because they believe in the promise of medical research. But people support scientific work only if they trust that it serves societal interests, respects patient dignity and operates with guardrails.

Scott Gottlieb

One of the noxious features of Obamacare was its forced march into a single, federally designed package of health benefits.

Scott Gottlieb

America tolerates a heavy toll from the flu on health and productivity. But if Covid becomes a twin risk, the heath-care system will struggle to fight both at once.

Scott Gottlieb

President Obama famously promised that the Affordable Care Act would not only slow the growth in health care costs, but would also reverse these trends, making the average health insurance plan cheaper. That isn't happening.

Scott Gottlieb

When I was a medical student, a pulmonary professor of mine cajoled me into joining a clinical trial that she was running. The general aim of the tests was to determine whether prolonged periods of short and shallow breathing would cause a person's lungs to go into spasm. It turns out, as I can attest, that they do.

Scott Gottlieb

The convergence of information technology and biology allows scientists to translate the human genome into digital data that can accelerate diagnoses and cures.

Scott Gottlieb

The first nation to develop a vaccine for Covid-19 could have an economic advantage as well as a tremendous public-health achievement. Doses will be limited initially as suppliers ramp up, and a country will focus on inoculating most of its own population first.

Scott Gottlieb

Covid-19 has altered world history.

Scott Gottlieb

When some states introduced mandatory smallpox vaccinations during the epidemic of 1898-1903, Americans resisted by the thousands. The ensuing battles produced medical conventions and case law that altered the balance between government authority and medical practice, in favor of federal control.

Scott Gottlieb

It's important to protect the old and the vulnerable, who are at the highest risk of severe illness and bad outcomes. But like most issues of medicine, it isn't a binary choice. Given the uncertainties of how this virus spreads and its high risk of infirmities, it would be unwise to abandon efforts to limit Covid spread wherever possible.

Scott Gottlieb

Smallpox can be personally devastating. After a 14-day incubation period, patients experience high fevers, headaches, and sometimes severe abdominal pain. A rash resembling chicken pox appears in the mouth and throat, face, and forearms, and spreads to the trunk and legs. As patients recover, scabs break and pitted scars appear.

Scott Gottlieb

There are two main types of immunity to an infection. Innate immunity comes from circulating cells that attack any invader the body views as foreign. Adaptive immunity is specific to the pathogen presented. Through adaptive response, immune cells are programmed to secrete antibodies that are primed to target a viral invader.

Scott Gottlieb

One thing about Covid-19 is clear: We don't fully understand its severity and transmission. At various turns, we've both underestimated and overestimated the virus.

Scott Gottlieb

There's instinctual discomfort about using evidence of past immunity as a factor for decisions about health, work or even questions like whether it's safe to visit someone in a nursing home. But there are ways to deploy immunity information to help us understand our own health status and keep us safer from Covid, without surrendering privacy.

Scott Gottlieb

The pace at which fundamental discoveries of basic science are being uncovered is accelerating, as is the speed at which medical practice is being transformed by these inventions.

Scott Gottlieb

The ability of working class Americans to bargain for health coverage at work gave them access to the same basic packages of benefits as executive management teams.

Scott Gottlieb