Sir, In her seething column "Big pharma is a two-faced friend" (July 19), Marcia Angell is furious at Pfizer for giving discount drugs to uninsured Americans. Apparently, offering cheaper drugs to low-income people is nothing but a cynical public relations ploy by the pharmaceutical industry.

In her jaundiced world view, Dr Angell cannot seem to accept that a big company could ever engage in an act of charity. To her, it is all a big corporate conspiracy. She even suggests that Pfizer is discounting drugs as part of some twisted tax-evasion scheme, noting that Pfizer "could come out ahead if it gets a large enough tax deduction". No good deed goes unpunished, and Dr Angell seems determined to break Pfizer on the wheel. She rages on that the pharmaceutical industry "needs to curb its greed". Bold language for someone who lectures in the rarefied halls of Harvard Medical School, which charges an annual tuition fee of about $28,000.

After excoriating Pfizer, Dr Angell declares that Americans are angry because it is illegal to reimport drugs from Canada. She complains that "Canadians can get exactly the same drugs for half to two-thirds the price". That is simply not true. My uncle died five years ago from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The American drug Rituxan that might have helped him was not available in Canada.

Before Dr Angell decides to write another anti-pharmaceutical screed, she ought to at least get her facts straight.