SQUIBB DEFENDS EBERT

To the Editors of The Crimson:

As a businessman and as a friend and admirer of Dean Ebert, I was disappointed in your editorial criticizing his consulting relationship with Squibb Corporation. While I certainly respect your right to question any and all consulting arrangements, I believe that with this right goes the responsibility to try to put the relevant facts in perspective. This you utterly failed to do.

We (I stretch the editorial "we" to include our public affairs department) tried to explain to your reporter in some detail that the Mysteclin-F matter, like so many other issues of drug efficacy, involved complex questions of benefits versus risks, questions on which medical experts could legitimately disagree. We earnestly endeavored to convey our point of view--totally disregarded in your editorial--that pharmaceutical companies had a right, indeed a duty, to retain the best possible medical counsel to help them develop and review their products.

By choosing to ignore this point, you seemed to imply that there was something sinister about our having highly regarded medical scientists serving as consultants. Are you suggesting that, if we had set our sights lower and been satisfied with second-rate medical counsel, there would have been no issue of propriety at all? In any event, Squibb doesn't settle for second best, and I think most consumers are glad we don't. We intend to continue to get the very best advice we can from non-industry scientists to supplement our own experts.

Furthermore, you unquestioningly accepted the negative opinion on Mysteclin-F reportedly rendered by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel. Just what makes you think that these unidentified panelists are absolutely right and Squibb scientists and the outside experts advising us are absolutely wrong? Even after your short exposure to this question, you should have learned that these are highly complex matters on which competent scientists can legitimately differ. In this case, where there is no question as to the safety of the product or as to its efficacy (it cures the people it purports to cure) or as to the fact that it does mitigate a well-known side effect of tetracycline therapy (reduction of the growth of monilial organisms) and where the only question is the clinical significance in certain patients of this reduction of monilial growth, the issue is particularly intricate from a scientific point of view. But it is hardly a question of consumer protection in any generally accepted sense.

What is most disturbing to me about your editorial is that it seems to be based on the assumption that in a controversy between the Government and a group of its citizens (if you grant that Squibb consists for this purpose of its citizens employees and shareholders) the Government is bound to be right and the citizens are bound to be wrong. This attitude has been widely accepted in many societies throughout a great deal of man's history. It is, however, disconcerting to find it expressed in 1972 on the editorial page of The Crimson. Richard M. Furlaud   President, Squlbb Corporation   I.L.B. '47