"Price controls, by reducing or eliminating profit margins, will leave pharmaceutical and biotech firms with less capital and incentive to invest in expensive research and development of new drugs. Price controls in any field," observed Bernstein, "necessarily lead to a diminished supply of goods and services in that field."

"In the past decade, for example, price controls in Europe have caused biotech investment there to fall precipitously--from $6 billion to $2 billion--and led to a significant drop in the development of innovative drugs. Do we want the same to happen in America, where current investment on developing drugs is $16 billion?"

"The reason price controls are impractical," Bernstein explained, "is that they are immoral. In this particular case, they forcibly prevent producers of life-promoting goods and services from gaining the financial rewards they have so abundantly earned. What policy could be more unjust than one penalizing the innovators who, literally, keep us alive?"

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Dr. Andrew Bernstein, a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, is available for interviews.