While on the presidential campaign trail in recent weeks, Senator Clinton has pushed a domestic agenda that’s hammered home two themes: reforming the nation’s health care system and spurring economic growth through increased federal funding for sciences such as biotechnology.

During a May 24 speech at George Washington University, the former first lady unveiled a new universal health plan she claims would reduce costs by $120 billion. Key to that plan is placing price controls on the pharmaceutical industry and allowing Medicare to “negotiate” prescription drug costs.

“You know, I believe that if we did give Medicare the chance to negotiate with drug companies, we would save $10 billion to $15 billion a year,” Mrs. Clinton said a few days later in New Hampshire, where she spoke of curbing “the excesses of the market place” and criticized existing policies that “protect the drug companies from competition.”

“Why should the drug companies be immune from the process that goes on every day in America, where you bargain for the best deal you can get?” she said.

A week after her GWU speech, the senator was in California addressing a crowd of Silicon Valley executives. There, she spoke of the economic initiatives she would push as president. Mrs. Clinton stressed more must be done by the federal government to support research and development in biotechnology and other sciences.

“The integrity of science has been under assault for six years. Ideologues have called the shots,” the senator said. “In its innovation’s absence, we can’t expect to continue the same quality of life. We need leadership that sets our sights on the stars, and gives us the tools to get there.”

Mrs. Clinton’s agenda is as contradictory as it is ambitious.

The fortunes of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries are inextricably linked. They feed off each other. Investors fund biotech companies, which then undertake research to develop new and improved medications and therapies. These companies then work with pharmaceutical firms to manufacture and market these products to patients.

Mrs. Clinton’s rhetoric is reminiscent of 1993-1994, when she and her husband

also proposed government price controls as part of a plan in which a National Health Board would investigate “unreasonable” drug prices that were higher in America than abroad. Medicare, under the Clinton plan then, also would “negotiate” for lower drug costs.

Yet, in reaching back now to her plan from the past, New York’s junior senator seems to have forgotten that it was the biotech industry that played a significant role in thwarting her attempt to reform health care the first time around.

The industry recognized then that price controls on drugs meant there would be little reason for investors to make risky investments in biotech research. Thus, in opposing that aspect of Clinton’s initiative, the biotech industry ultimately set the stage for the 1994 defeat of the former first lady’s entire universal health plan.

Of course, a lot has changed over the past 13 years. Public biotech companies had a market capitalization of $45 billion then. Today, that has grown almost tenfold, surpassing $400 billion. Meanwhile, biotech firms in 1994 spent $7 billion on research and development. In 2005, that figure jumped to almost $20 billion. Total revenue over the same 11-year span has grown to $51 billion from $8 billion.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the fact that’s there is no guarantee biotech research and development will produce any results. Just 8% of drugs that begin clinical trials will ultimately be approved, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

By its very nature, the likelihood of biotech research failing to produce a marketable product is great. Therefore, limits on the reward of those investments — through price controls — make the initial investment unattractive. With price controls, investors could get equally low returns for less risky, nonbiotech investments.

There are 1,415 biotech companies across America today. Collectively, they have created more than 200 new therapies and vaccines, targeting everything from cancer and diabetes to HIV and AIDS. They also have 400 drugs in clinical trials, treating more than 200 diseases. And in 2005 alone, biotech companies signed 564 new agreements with the pharmaceutical industry.

Mrs. Clinton can’t have it both ways. By taking aim at the drug companies, the former first lady stands only to inflict collateral damage upon the biotech industry — the very industry she says she wants to help.

Three weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton stated that while she has scars from her 1994 health-reform days, she also learned some valuable lessons. Indeed, the scars are visible. But, given her recent rhetoric, one has to wonder whether she truly learned any lessons at all.

Mr. Bragdon is a health policy analyst with the Empire Center for New York State Policy.