First Opinion is STAT’s platform for interesting, illuminating, and provocative articles about the life sciences writ large, written by biotech insiders, health care workers, researchers, and others.
To encourage robust, good-faith discussion about issues raised in First Opinion essays, STAT publishes selected Letters to the Editor received in response to them. You can submit a Letter to the Editor here, or find the submission form at the end of any First Opinion essay.
In a recent STAT op-ed, Pooja Yerramilli argues that U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain vulnerabilities are not about geopolitics but result from weak U.S. regulation and an industry that prioritizes profit over public health. In so doing, her argument mistakenly treats these two explanations as mutually exclusive when they are in fact quite interrelated. While she agrees China “dominates nearly every step in the pharmaceuticals production process,” she also insists that U.S. national security risks from that dependence are overstated, including in our recent Council on Foreign Relations report, and does not adequately consider the origins of that dependence.
We were among the authors of the CFR report she critiques, which drew on a yearlong study group of pharmaceutical, regulatory, China, and national-security specialists and former officials dedicated to identifying the true scope of U.S. biopharmaceutical dependence on China, assessing the associated risks for U.S. security and patients, and recommending practical ways to reduce those risks.
