It was a telling moment during the Democratic presidential debate in Iowa Monday, carried on MSNBC, when Senator Kerry unleashed an attack on the pharmaceutical industry. The surprise wasn’t that a Democrat would attack a big business. Vice President Gore made a campaign of it in 2000, railing against Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Drugs, and the rest of it. The shock was Mr. Kerry’s zero-sum assumptions about the American economy. Discussing the Medicare bill, Mr. Kerry said, “The headlines you saw in the newspapers the last days said, ‘Drug Companies Win.’ Now if the drug companies win, who’s losing? It’s the seniors in America.” Could a politician voice a more wrongheaded sentiment, painting any large business as an enemy, by definition, of the American people?

The pharmaceutical industry, whatever qualms one might have with it, has been churning out miracle drugs capable of prolonging human life and improving its quality. These drugs also supplant other, more expensive, forms of medical care. A business professor at Columbia University, Frank Lichtenberg, has found that an increase of 100 prescriptions is associated with 16.3 fewer hospital days, and 3.36 fewer in-patient surgical procedures. A $1 increase in pharmaceutical expenditure is associated with about a $4 reduction in other health expenditures. Drug companies couldn’t create these gains without profits. Mr. Kerry couldn’t have things more backward.