To the Editor:

Notwithstanding the claims made in the Aug. 13 op-ed article "Time for a Drug Test Registry," any such requirement would reduce the quality of consumer information and the contribution of new pharmaceuticals to improving health care.

Even highly effective drugs on average will demonstrate lower effectiveness across all trials as opposed to trials designed to measure only their effectiveness; many trials are not designed for that purpose or employ sample sizes that are too small. Consumers thus could be misled by a disclosure system that lumped together highly disparate trials. It is the large-scale safety and effectiveness trials for medications that provide the unbiased and reliable information consumers seek. Also, the casual assertion that drug companies have incentives to mislead physicians and patients about the effectiveness of their products is incorrect. The companies have enormous investments in their brand names and attempts to mislead would only erode that brand-name capital and thus the prices and market shares that a company would hope to command over time.

SALLY C. PIPES
President & CEO
Pacific Research Institute
San Francisco