On the April issue:

On Big Pharma

To the Editor:
As an oncologist, I must agree with Tevi Troy’s praise of the U.S. pharmacology industry (“In Praise of Big Pharma,” April). It should be pointed out, however, that Big Pharma charges affluent governments in Europe considerably less for expensive drugs used in the treatment of cancer patients than they do for the same drugs sold to Americans. This results in Americans paying more for the same drugs.
Seymour M. Cohen, M.D.,
Associate Clinical Professor  of Medicine
Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

To the Editor:
Tevi Troy’s otherwise authoritative article on Big Pharma failed to mention a few things. For one thing, there’s the U.S. longevity decline. For another, the Covid mRNA vaccine response was not an unalloyed success. There were many side effects to a vaccine produced in an ineffectual pursuit of an ever-mutating virus.
George Gilder
Tyringham, Massachusetts

To the Editor:
This was a great article by Tevi Troy. I will be sure to send it to an RFK Jr.–supporting colleague of mine who is always banging on about Big Pharma being part of some vaccine cabal with the government. I realize that you can’t fix crazy (actually Big Pharma can help with that, too), but this article might get through.
Steve O’Connor
Amston, Connecticut

Tevi Troy writes:
Thanks to Dr. Cohen for his praise. He is indeed correct that nongeneric drugs cost less in Europe than in the U.S. The cost differential is largely because of price controls imposed by European governments, which means that American consumers subsidize European price controls. Pharma prices in the U.S. would likely be lower if pharma companies could charge something closer to market price across all the modern economies. Pharma critics want to impose price controls on drugs sold in the U.S. as well, but that would likely lead to less innovation and less availability of new treatments in the U.S.

I am flattered that George Gilder, whom I have been reading and admiring for decades, not only read my piece but called it “authoritative.” There has indeed been a longevity decline in the U.S. in recent years, which is attributable to a complex variety of factors, including addiction, obesity, and deaths of despair. Pharmaceutical products can potentially help address each of these problems. As for the mRNA vaccine, Gilder is correct that it was not perfect, and that there are some people who benefit from it more than others. At the same time, it was also a huge scientific breakthrough and contributed to society returning to something resembling normal after a difficult period.

As for Steve O’Connor, I appreciate his kind words and wish him luck with his mission to use my article to convince people in power about the benefits generated by the U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

Putin and Presidents

To the Editor:
Thank you for Matthew Continetti’s column on American leadership and Vladimir Putin (“The Putin Trap,” April). I fear only that the people who need to understand it won’t. I have a special bond with Ukraine as I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Donetsk in the 1990s, and I returned to the Peace Corps in 2015 after the war to serve two years in Zhytomyr. I also had relocated to Kyiv in 2021, hopefully to stay for good. Then I had to run when the war started.

My experience has given me insight to what’s been happening. It’s been very frustrating to see American presidents keep trying to connect with Putin and failing miserably. It certainly doesn’t help that Donald Trump and his team have basically switched sides. In the end, the request shouldn’t be that Ukraine give up territory. It should be that Russia leave Ukraine. I know people are afraid of Putin, but that’s what has gotten us to this point.

Putin will not change. We should get our act together because Russia will still try to take all of Ukraine. Garry Kasparov is right: Only when Crimea is returned to Ukraine and Russia is forced into military defeat will this situation end. All other solutions are temporary and do nothing to help Ukraine.

The Baltic states are clear-eyed about what is happening and know that they will certainly be next, NATO or not. We, the collective West, need to start listening to these smaller countries on the front lines. They are not hysterical. They are not looking for enrichment from the U.S. They know that sooner, rather than later, Putin will say the Baltics are “abusing Russian citizens,” and then it will be a matter of time.
Rob O’Leary
Vilnius, Lithuania

Poshlost

To the Editor:
Thank you for Irina Velitskaya’s essay about Israel’s performative enemies (“The Coalition of the Sentimental and the Homicidal,” April). It’s the most successful attempt I’ve seen to date to make sense of the psychology of virtue-signaling.  

I can’t count how many times I have seen actors and musicians and other celebrities that I once respected step out and disgrace themselves by proudly declaring their support for the murderous hordes, the killers whose cruelty and derangement outdo anything that we’ve ever seen, even in the sickest horror films. They come on stage to receive their awards and revel in the adulation of the audience, so pleased with themselves for having the courage and integrity to kick and vilify the Jews in the name of a higher morality. You ask yourself how they could possibly be so blind and stupid, so easily misled by third-rate propagandists who have so little to work with. They do it for the compliments they get from other equally deluded fellow travelers in a sort of closed circuit of praise.

Oh, the poshlost of it all!
Sam Hilt
Petaluma, California

To the Editor:

I appreciate Irina Velitskaya’s explaining why many of my otherwise intelligent and humane friends are horrified by Israel fighting back after the massacre of its civilians and why they claim to support the Palestinians.

In these people’s eyes, Israel, fighting for its survival, has become the enemy and those who detest Israel and most of the West have become innocents.
Lindy Clubb
La Salle, Manitoba, Canada

To the Editor:
Irina Velitskaya’s article was very powerful. I recently saw a photograph of the graduation of my Jewish neighbors’ daughter. In it, the young woman is proudly wearing a keffiyeh around her neck. Velitskaya’s essay strikes to the core of this issue.
Rachel Geller Groner
Baltimore

To the Editor:
Many thanks to Irina Velitskaya for reminding me of the beauty of the Russian language. I was more familiar with it in my teenage years. I would add that the untranslatable word poshlost has its stress on the first syllable: First, one becomes posh—benefitting from a deceptively comfortable lifestyle that was painstakingly built by prior generations. And then, one becomes lost by rejecting our Western and Judeo-Christian civilizational roots. 

The result is the eminently translatable phrase attributed to Vladimir Lenin, to refer to Western sympathizers and apologists for his vicious murderous ideology: useful idiots.
Kevin Jon Williams
Wynnewood, Pennsylvania

Irina Velitskaya writes:
I would like to thank these readers for their thoughtful responses to my article. Poshlost, it would appear, is everywhere these days. I just encountered a non-fiction book bearing the exceedingly presumptuous title One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The “this” of the title is not the October 7 massacre, or the attempts by naive or hateful Westerners to justify it or deny it, or the 18 years of rocket fire from Gaza into Israeli communities that preceded it, or the massacres of Christians, Hindus, Druze, Yazidi, Jews, and other minorities by radical Islamist groups occurring worldwide.  No, the “it” turns out to be Israel’s defensive and preventative war against Hamas and other Iranian-backed terror groups.  The cover of the book features the image of a plummeting missile headed directly at the head of a cute little pigtailed girl looking up hopefully, making a peace sign with one hand, and holding a little flower in the other (not a single terror tunnel or terrorist in sight). Pure, unadulterated poshlost.

Nothing but Bluesky?

To the Editor:
The negative and threatening comments on Bluesky that James B. Meigs highlights in his column are worrying, but they’re not representative of my experience on the platform (“The Online Cone of Silence,” April). On Bluesky, I appreciate the news, updates, science discussions, and more. I especially enjoy its sports posts. I could, however, do with fewer posts about cats.

My overall sense is that the author undersells the negativity, name calling, and damage on X (I let go of my X account a while back). I’m also glad that, since switching, I get to avoid the trolling posts that come from Elon Musk.

After reading Meigs’s article, I’m going to be more attuned to any threatening language, but for the time being I’m going to keep using Bluesky.
Joshua Richardson
San Francisco1

James B. Meigs writes:
I’m glad Joshua Richardson is having a better experience on Bluesky than I have. I don’t disagree that X has been surfacing more ugly posts since Musk took it over. For me, that’s an unhappy but tolerable trade-off for the site’s improved openness to different opinions. (I suspect there could be a middle path that allows ideological diversity without elevating so many abusive jerks, but Musk does things his own way.) Anyway, I understand if the current trollish tone of X is too much for some people, just as I find the pitchfork-waving on Bluesky less than welcoming. I agree that, whichever social media platforms one uses, it is healthy to limit politics and spend time on sports or other topics. Except cats, of course.

The BBC’s Anti-Semitism

To the Editor:
Stephen Pollard’s case regarding the BBC’s appalling anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias is well founded and beyond the possibility of doubt (“The Unbounded Anti-Semitism of the BBC,” April). But there is another factor that illustrates how deeply the virus of anti-Semitism has infected this venerable, once-trusted news agency and led it to abdicate its professional responsibilities and bedrock journalistic standards: its shameful and deliberate abuse and misuse of the English language.

A communication entity with “British” in its name should be supremely able and proud to properly operate the engine of precision, nuance, accuracy, and grace that is the King’s English. As Pollard illustrates, the BBC’s inability or, worse, unwillingness, to distinguish betwe-en “hostage” and “prisoner” shows the BBC’s debasement of both its
 language and its self-respect. The British people and their government might want to demand some changes.
Alan M. Schwartz
Teaneck, New Jersey