‘The Merck Case’

The New York Sun’s editorial indicting the role of trial lawyers and extolling the virtues of the drug industry presents a blatantly anti-consumer view of the Vioxx scandal [“The Merck Case,” November 15, 2004].

Most egregious is your failure to recognize that Merck’s behavior is in fact scandalous. While Merck may have been “the most admired company” from a business perspective, its behavior regarding its highly profitable anti-inflammatory drug has been far from admirable.

Surely, the Food and Drug Administration is at fault also, but the point is that the pharmaceutical experts on whom the public must necessarily rely failed miserably in this case. The fact that Merck may have purposely hidden or understated known dangers makes the case against it even more outrageous.

Trial lawyers are not the enemy here. Without them, everyday people victimized by corporate greed would not stand a chance. Our civil justice system levels the playing field and places the ordinary citizen on equal footing with multibillion dollar corporations. Your suggested alternative would shorchange victims and remove industry accountability.

In making the case that business needs to be allowed to do business, you cite the damage trial lawyers have done to the tobacco and asbestos industries. How about the untold lives that have been saved as a result?

While drug and other mega-industries will always choose otherwise, people should come first, not profits.

SHOSHANA BOOKSON
President New York State Trial Lawyers Association
Manhattan

‘The Quiet Americans’

Lauren Mechling’s article on the hostility faced by American expatriates in the United Kingdom was interesting yet unsurprising. I fail to understand why Americans should follow the British Parliament’s election results any more than that of Japan’s Diet or China’s Communist Party given both nations have a higher gross domestic product than that of the U.K. [“The Quiet Americans,” Page 1, November 15, 2004].

If historical ties were the reason, then Americans ought to follow the French elections with equal fervor given that country’s role in the war of independence. Ditto for American interest in Prime Minister Blair’s re-election, an event that ought to register as much on the political Richter scale here as a Silvio Berlusconi run for office.

While the U.K. economy is by far one of the most dynamic in Europe, it is dwarfed by that of America. With the economies of China and India growing rapidly, there will come a time in the not too distant future when the much ballyhooed trans-Atlantic relationship will be viewed under the cold light of economic statistics.

In the leaden economies of France and Germany, where unemployment remains obstinately at double-digit levels, enterprising young people have been looking elsewhere for opportunities for some time, with America being a favored destination. Other than a few notably good educational institutions in the U.K. and Europe that attract some talent from here, it is hard to think of more than a handful of reasons for young Americans to cross the pond to live for any length of time.

Analyzing, much less rationalizing, European hostility is a futile and uneconomic exercise, but one of the many factors fueling it is the creeping realization that, as an economic force, they matter for less in the larger world. The fact is, European smarminess, frequently fueled by President Bush’s verbal infelicity, came a cropper in the aftermath of the American elections. It will be a while, if ever, before they get used to the “Cowboy from Texas” who has done so much to upend their arrogated role in world affairs.

VIJAY DANDAPANI
Manhattan

Teachers’ Pact Battle

There is a struggle over how to reform public education. Politicians want to put ideologues and high-priced administrators in greater control over teachers. The union wants its member professionals to be freer to apply their experience. And The New York Sun has suggested that competition from vouchers and charter schools would induce reform voluntarily [“Battle Erupts Over Terms of Teachers’ Pact,” Dina Temple-Raston, Page 1, October 27, 2004].

The mayor would rationalize a wage increase as reform in the form of an alleged productivity increase. I specialized in productivity increases, as a systems analyst, and was married to a veteran teacher. We found that well-meaning chancellors who attempted to apply business methods to the chaotic Board of Education should have stuck to the purchasing and construction divisions.

Students are not merely products, and education does not lend itself to the same methods of productivity. The administrators and mayors confused more teachers’ time at the school and more teacher-education courses with productivity.

Hinted: To justify a salary increase, the mayor will demand an extra week of teacher-but-not-student attendance at school. This is an old ploy. So also is basing pay increases on teacher-education courses that are notorious for being insubstantial.

There is no positive correlation between teachers staying more at school by themselves and student performance. It is like a form of punishment. There would be a negative correlation. One of the major problems in New York City public education is the flight of experienced teachers from a system that harasses them in such ways.

Teachers need a few days before classes to get organized. The administrators and schedulers need another few days to prepare the way, but their efforts are hampered by the system’s not having ready the budget and a realistic roster of incoming students. Most semesters, therefore, start off in chaos.

What good would it do for teachers to arrive days earlier, without students? Even in a factory – that poor analogy made to schools – workers cannot be productive without the raw materials to work on.

“Productivity” has become the politicians’ new pretense at getting something for taxpayers in return for union pay increases. It often is not realized, and in the case of teachers, is counterproductive.

RICHARD H. SHULMAN
Manhattan

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