Drug Companies Should Go Back to What They Do Best (int'l edition)

''Crunch time in pill land'' (American News, Nov. 22) was correct in pointing out the many pitfalls of using mergers and acquisitions to sustain pharmaceutical companies' desperation for short-term growth and lofty stock prices. There is a common misconception in the drug industry that bigger means better. The distorted logic of buying your way into bigger research and development budgets, more massive sales forces, and larger marketing machines--and thus better performance--has little support from historical evidence of mergers earlier in the decade.

Instead, drug companies should be doing what they have always done best--supporting the therapeutic function of medicine. When medicine was still in its curative stage, antibiotics and aspirin did wonders for the companies that produced them. In the new paradigm of preventive health care, where chronic illnesses prevail, the market calls for integrative solutions, not mere pills and capsules to reduce suffering and improve quality of life.

That is, in addition to vigorously pursuing new frontiers in fields like pharmacogenomics, traditional research-based drug giants should investigate the potential of complementary therapies, new combinations of vitamin and herbal supplements, and traditional Chinese medicine.

Gabriel M. Leung
Faculty of Medicine
University of Hong Kong

The Downside of Putting ''Mr. Yen'' at the IMF (int'l edition)

Regarding ''Why Tokyo wants Mr. Yen to be Mr. IMF'' (Finance, Nov. 29): Eisuke Sakakibara as the head of the International Monetary Fund would be a gigantic step backward for Japan and the world. It suggests that the old-system forces that have lost every bit of credibility are still at work.

Sakakibara is one of those high-profile cultural chauvinists who pop up once in a while in Japan. Despite his rather extensive exposure to the West, he seems to be a conservative force in Japan, trying to slow down reform largely because the forces toward reform do not come from within Japan. Sakakibara is an advocate of the old system of collusion between government bureaucrats, politicians, and businesses at the expense of ordinary citizens, a system that has now proved embarrassingly bankrupt.

Japan had tried to convince other Asian countries to adopt ''Japanese capitalism'' as the preferred system under which Japan was to establish its hegemony in Asia. The Asian crisis seemed to have convinced the smart leaders in Asia to pursue a different course.

Thomas P. Treichler
San Francisco