The American pharmaceutical industry, for all its faults and mistakes, is on the whole an amazing source of lifesaving innovations. If we’re not careful, it will go the way of the tobacco industry, asbestos companies, and other sectors of the American economy that flourished until the tort lawyers got them in their sights. Few politicians have understood this more clearly than Mr. Bush, who said in the third presidential debate, “One of the reasons I’m such a strong believer in legal reform is so that people aren’t afraid of producing a product that is necessary for the health of our citizens, and then end up getting sued in a court of law.”

That paragraph is from our November 15 editorial, “The Merck Case.” In the wake of Friday’s disclosures by Pfizer and Eli Lilly about drug risks, the warning looks unfortunately prescient. The Pfizer news alone destroyed, in one day, more than $20 billion of market capitalization for the drug company, which is based here in New York City. And the politicians in Washington are using the news to call for reform of the Food and Drug Administration, the bureaucracy responsible for drug approval and safety.

“Early action on bipartisan FDA re forms is possible in Congress, and I hope that the White House and congressional leadership will not stand in the way,” Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts said in a statement yesterday. Mr. Kennedy, ignoring the fact that Merck’s Vioxx and Pfizer’s Celebrex were both approved by the FDA during the Clinton administration, used the health warnings as the basis for a partisan attack on the Bush administration. “I know that this is the administration that never admits a mistake, but its record on protecting us from harmful prescription drugs is a catastrophic failure,” Mr. Kennedy said.

But it isn’t just Massachusetts liberals jumping on to the FDA reform bandwagon. Senator Grassley of Iowa, the Republican who chairs the Finance Committee, called for “an independent commission of experts – along the lines of the 9-11 commission” to undertake “a comprehensive review of drug safety and of how federal government agencies oversee drug research and approve, license and regulate drugs.”

But it is not the FDA that is threatening to drive the drug companies out of business and that is destroying tens of billions of dollars in value a day. That distinction belongs to the plaintiff’s bar. Without tort reform, the medicine-makers are going to be the next asbestos and tobacco companies. If the companies think that is overstating it, they are kidding themselves. And if they want to avoid it, they are going to need to start getting a lot more aggressive in making their case to the public.

Consider, for example, what would hap pen if the entire pharmaceutical industry came out and said that until tort reform passes it will stop selling medicine. The outcry would underscore that, overall, the benefits of these medicines far outweigh the risks. And such a halt to drug production and sales would underscore the danger of a failure to proceed with tort reform, a failure that seems all too likely.

The alternative to these private drug companies, after all, is a centralized system run and staffed by government employees. It would be a lot like the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Internal Revenue Service or the Food and Drug Administration or the Post Office or any number of other agencies that every decade or so Congress decides is ripe for a blue-ribbon commission and the attendant “reform.” With the drug industry and its incredible innovations creating jobs, health, and wealth for so many, America has it basically right. The danger now lies in allowing the lawyers or politicians to destroy it.