Negotiating prescription peace. SPH Professor of Health Services Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, an SPH research analyst, are calling for a negotiated settlement to the escalating conflict between drug manufacturers and patients in the United States.

They say that drug manufacturers can be guaranteed current profits, which protect their ability to finance research, and the prices of prescriptions can be lowered to equal or below those in Canada.

The researchers compared the cost of U.S. brand-name prescription drugs with those in Canada and six wealthy western European nations. On average, Americans paid 60 percent more than people in other countries in 2000, 73 percent more in 2001, and 77 percent more in 2002. Such disparity is unsustainable, they say, and leads Americans to seek relief through a combination of Medicare prescription drug benefits and imports from Canada or other nations. The high prices, they argue, make it difficult to craft an affordable Medicare benefit.

The authors propose that a cut in prices would be readily offset by increases in the volume of lower priced prescriptions. Patients could afford to fill prescriptions in accordance with their doctor’s orders, and public subsidies would be feasible for patients still unable to afford needed medications.

“Together, the higher private market demand and the publicly subsidized demand would aim to generate sufficient volume, at the newly lowered prices, to generate the same total revenue that prevailed before prices were cut,” say the authors. For the complete report see: http://dcc2.bumc.bu.edu/hs/pdfs/Lower%20drug%20prices.pdf.

Green enough? Earth has grown significantly greener over the past 20 years, according to a recent investigation by Ranga Myneni, a CAS associate professor of geography, and coinvestigators. Such changes have been especially apparent in the forests of the northern latitudes and in the tropical areas of South America and India. However, researchers caution that the amount of resources generated by the increased vegetation is far outstripped by the demand for food, shelter, and heating from a rapidly increasing global population.

The investigators analyzed satellite observations of planet-wide plant growth as well as patterns of temperature, rainfall, and cloud cover during the period between 1982 and 1999. They calculated the amount of carbon stored in vegetation, a measure known as net primary production (NPP), which is determined by subtracting the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis from that released into the atmosphere when plants respire. NPP is important because it not only indicates how much carbon -- the building block of life on earth -- is available to use for food, fuel, or shelter, but it can also help to predict atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a measure related to global warming.

The researchers mapped changes in water availability, temperature, and sunlight during this period -- one in which earth experienced record-setting temperatures and three intense El Niño weather events. They were able to relate an increase in greening in the Amazon basin with thinning of the cloud cover and more sunlight, and vegetation growth in India with increased rainfall, a result of more dependable monsoons. Altogether, the period showed NPP growth of 6 percent -- making a 3 percent increase available for human consumption. During the same period, the earth’s population increased by about 35 percent, leaving a net loss in the amount of carbon available for human use.

This research was published in the June 6 issue of the journal Science. Additional information is available at http://cybele.bu.edu.