Wayne Koberstein

}Drug costs continue to rise at an alarming rate. Two major reasons for the increasing costs are introductions of new drugs and direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns that have been effective in marketing expensive name brand drugs.}

During our conversation, Reeve pushes an even broader agenda: getting pharmaceutical companies to realize the huge market potential in spinal-cord research for a host of neurological conditions. He implores companies to put their attention, and their investment, into enterprises that are creating breakthroughs in new technologies promising wide therapeutic application.

Industry Must Invest

Managing expectations is the new alchemy. All manipulators of opinion, from the US president down to the humblest peddler, now seek to minimize what people expect

My parents recently showed me an old news photo of my brother being moved from one hospital to another, in his iron lung. The year was 1950. Just seven years old, visibly smiling as usual in his overhead mirror, Gary lay prone as a small crowd of medics guided the huge wheeled cylinder toward a waiting ambulance. Polio had widely destroyed the motor neurons in his brain and spinal cord, and his muscles had atrophied from lying still. The iron lung pushed and pulled his chest through the breathing cycle. Gary lived only a few months after the photo's dateline.