Pete Stark

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin).

Mr. STARK. There are?

Mr. STARK. Which others?

Mr. STARK. I thank the gentlewoman. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kleczka).

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) asked, ``Why would anybody do this?'' I would answer that the one need just to look at Golden Rule Financial's contributions to find the answer: soft money, 1997 to 1998, $314,000 to the Republicans, and not a penny to the Democrats. Under this amendment, Golden Rule Insurance Company, the main company that benefits from MSAs, will get $5 billion over the next 10 years. You guys are selling out too cheap to these lobbyists. You have taken their $300,000 and given them a bill worth 5 billion. That is what the Republicans are doing in this bill. They have sold out to the special interests; they have sold out to the insurance companies. Shame on you.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin).

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to allocate 10 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Thurman), who, unlike previous speakers, has read the bill.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Ganske.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin).

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this is, as many speakers have said before, a sad day for those of us who are neither lawyers or physicians, but from time to time become patients in the medical delivery system. Because what my Republican colleagues have done under the leadership of the President of the United States and the Republican Speaker of the House is just sold out the insurance companies and created a system for the very richest people in the United States. One might say, there they go again, harming the average working person and bailing out the rich insurance companies, the rich pharmaceutical companies, the rich managed care companies, and making it easier for them to make a profit by denying us care. There is no other way that a managed care company makes a profit, except to withhold care, pay less for it, give us less quality, or harm us. I am sorry that the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) sold out for a brief display of the Rose Garden. I am sorry that many of my colleagues would like to make this an issue of trial lawyers. I would suggest to my colleagues that the American public, when they are faced with a pharmaceutical company or Aetna Life Insurance Company, are going to trust the trial lawyer a whole lot more. And when the doctor cuts off the wrong leg or when care is denied, that doctor is not going to do anything to bring back a loved one, that doctor is not going to redo the procedure. That doctor is going to run and hide. And the only way we will get the doctors to do the right thing is to take them to court occasionally and make them live up to their professional creed, which we are not seeing much of here in the House today. I hope that we will continue to support the Ganske-Dingell legislation which is a compromise. It comes close to the Senate bipartisan agreement which again is a compromise. These two bills, when fit together, will do a lot to provide those of us who use managed care with a reasonable certainty that we will be treated fairly, our medical decisions will be decided by people with medical experience and qualifications and not by clerks who will deny care to make a bonus or a profit for their company. I think we will find that the cost of medical care will not go up as it has not in States which have these programs. The quality of medical care will improve; and who knows, we may find that we may expand coverage to those 40 million people that the Republicans have chosen to ignore. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney) to set the record straight.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, on July 1, 2001, Richard King, of Fremont, California, was officially named the 2001-2002 president of Rotary International, one of the largest volunteer organizations in the world. Mr. King is a trial lawyer and a member of the Rotary Club of Niles. A Rotary club member since 1968, Mr. King has served as a trustee of The Rotary Foundation and director and chairman of the Executive Committee of Rotary International's board of directors. He has been an active spokesperson at Rotary functions in more than 75 countries. Rotarians are represented in more than 160 countries worldwide and approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 29,000 Rotary Clubs. The main objective of Rotary is service in the community, in the workplace and throughout the world. Rotarians develop community service projects that address many critical issues, such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy, the environment, violence and children at risk. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchange for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. The Rotary motto is Service Above Self. As Richard King assumes the helm of leadership, I am confident he will completely exemplify the Rotary motto. I join Rotarians throughout the world in congratulating Mr. King on the presidency and wishing him every success.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2608, the Greenwood-Deutsch Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001, and in opposition to H.R. 2505. Cloning technology has been the subject of heated debate since 1997, when news of the successful cloning of Dolly the sheep rocked the scientific community. The resulting ethical discussions have raised many important questions of scientific development. Perhaps the most important discussions have centered on the lengths to which science can and should go in the future. What remained true throughout the debate, however, is that the vast majority of the American public vehemently opposes the creation of cloned human beings. The Greenwood-Deutsch bill respects that feeling to the utmost. H.R. 2608 would criminalize reproductive cloning of human beings while simultaneously protecting the rights of scientists to perform somatic cell nuclear transfer. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is a technology that holds great promise for medicine by permitting the creation of stem cells that are genetically identical to the donor. This is valuable because many of the potential medical therapies involving stem cells could be stymied when the immune systems of therapy recipients reject the transferred tissue. Using cloning technology to create stem cells could circumvent this problem. Newly cloned nerve cells, for example, could be used to treat patients with neural degeneration without concern for rejection because the cells would be genetically identical to those already in the brain. Opponents of this technology repeatedly claim that any therapies involving cloning are merely hypothetical. In this they are absolutely correct. These treatments are hypothetical today, but therapies for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and a myriad of other diseases will only remain so if this research is banned, as it is in H.R. 2505, the underlying bill. In addition to preventing this promising research, the underlying bill would prohibit the importation of the products of clonal research, Such a ban would force the scientific community to turn its back on therapies developed abroad. It would deny the American people promising new therapies available elsewhere for which there may be no alternate treatment. At some point in our lives, most of us will be touched in some way by Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, spinal cord injury, Juvenile Diabetes, and other maladies for which this technology holds promise. How can we stand in the way of scientific research that has the potential to cure these afflictions? I urge my colleagues to join me in support of the Greenwood-Deutsch substitute, and against the underlying bill.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, today I join with several colleagues to introduce bipartisan legislation, the Contact Lens Prescription Release Act of 2001. This bill would enhance consumer fairness in the contact lens industry by requiring eyecare professionals to release contact lens prescriptions after completing the fitting process. Currently, consumers throughout the United States enjoy unobstructed access to their eyeglass prescriptions. That's because back in 1973, the Federal Trade Commission issued a regulation requiring the automatic release of eyeglass prescriptions. Through this regulation, the FTC recognized that possession of both the prescription and the product constituted an unfair advantage for eye doctors and that consumers could safely manage their eyeglass prescriptions. At the time, it made sense that this rule was not extended to contact lenses, which were a brand new technology. Furthermore, most were hard lenses that needed to be ground and fitted to each particular eye. Today, the contact lens market looks very different. Thirty-four million Americans wear contact lens and 85% of them choose soft contacts. Contact lenses are fast replacing eyeglasses as the corrective instrument of choice for consumers. Yet despite this trend, in most states, prescribing eye care professionals can refuse to release contact lens prescriptions--even after patients complete the initial fitting process and even to longtime contact lens wearers who simply need their time-limited prescriptions renewed. Eye doctors cite health concerns, yet the reality is they have a strong financial incentive to restrict consumer access to the contact lens market. Without their contact lens prescription, consumers are often forced to purchase contact lens from their prescribing eye doctor. With contact lens wearers effectively denied the right to receive their own prescriptions, anti-competitive behavior has flourished. In fact, the American Optometric Association and Johnson & Johnson's, maker of the popular ACUVUE disposable contact lens, just reached a preliminary settlement in an antitrust lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of 32 states. The attorneys general alleged that defendants conspired both to force consumers to buy replacement contact lenses from eye care professionals only and to eliminate competition from alternative distributors, including pharmacies, While the resolution of these anti-trust lawsuits is a step toward putting contact lens wearers on equal footing with eyeglass wearers, more action is needed. Contact lens wearers must be assured the same access to their prescriptions that eyeglass wearers currently enjoy. Yet the FTC has repeatedly failed to update its rule and extend prescription release requirements to contact lenses. This does not bode well for consumers. It means that in many states, people who wear contact lens cannot shop around for the best value and quality products. In fact, this is exactly what happened to my wife back in 1994. Despite her request, this doctor refused to release her prescription, but was more than happy to sell her contacts through his professional office. At the time, it struck me as fundamentally unfair that eye doctors stand to profit from holding their patients captive. It still does. My wife's predicament is hardly unique. Over the past few years, Consumers Union has issued several reports detailing similar problems in Texas. A 1997 survey found that 65% of Texas optometrists refused to release contact lens prescriptions upon request, yet 91% of these same individuals did not hesitate to fill a prescription released by another eye doctor. Where are the health concerns here? The time has more than come for contact lens wearers to enjoy the same rights as eyeglass wearers. The Contact Lens Prescription Release Act would require the FTC to promulgate a prescription release rule for contact lenses paralleling the 1973 rule for eyeglasses. This would require eyecare professionals to release a patient's contact lens prescription to the patient after completing the fitting process. Upon request, contact lens prescriptions must also be released to an agent of the patient, such as an alternate contact lens distributor. Furthermore, eyecare professionals must promptly verify the information contained in a patient's prescription when an agent of the patient contacts them for such verification. To ensure that consumers are protected from misleading advertisements, the contact Lens Prescription Release Act would also make it an unfair trade practice to state or imply that contact lenses can be purchased without a valid prescription. I encourage my colleagues to join me in support of this important legislation, what has been endorsed by Consumers Union. There is absolutely no reason for the law to be inconsistent relative to vision correction by eyeglasses vs. contact lenses. More fundamentally, there is no reason why any American should be denied the basic right to receive their prescription, whether they wear eyeglasses, contact lenses, or both.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Save Money for Prescription Drug Research Act of 2001. The pharmaceutical industry is crying wolf, claiming that forced to reduce prescription drug costs for seniors, they will be unable to continue lifesaving drug research and development. This bill allows them to stop wasting money on physician incentives and redirect those funds to R&D. It would do so by denying tax deductions to drug companies for certain gifts and benefits, excepting product samples, provided to physicians and encourage use of such funds on R&D. Presently, these companies are spending billions of dollars on promotions to entice doctors to prescribe their products, and these dollars are tax deductible. According to a New York Times November 2000 article pharmaceutical companies spent $12 billion in 1999 courting physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants hoping to influence their prescribing habits. Experts estimate that drug companies spend an average of between $8,000 and $13,000 on individual physicians every year. Gifts come in the form of watches, jewelry, trips and expensive meals. The New York Times article lists one example where SmithKline Beecham offered physicians a $250 `consulting fee' and choice of entr6e at an expensive restaurant, merely for agreeing to attend an update on use of a cholesterol-reducing drug. These campaigns contribute to preference and rapid prescribing of new drugs, and decreased prescribing of generics. In other words, tax deductible dollars contribute to the rising prices of prescription drugs. For years the pharmaceutical industry has claimed that the high price of prescription drugs is due to investment in research and development. A recent Families USA report, however, indicated that this might not be the case. The report showed that at eight major pharmaceutical companies, investment in marketing, advertising and administration was more than double the investment in R&D. At Pfizer, for example, 39% of the net revenue, more than $11 billion, went to these expenses, while only 15% of revenues were devoted to R&D. It is unquestionable that the research and development of new drugs is an expensive process. However, if the pharmaceutical industry intends to claim that it cannot afford research if drug prices for seniors are reduced, perhaps they ought to more carefully consider their priorities. Clever marketing ploys that influence physician prescribing habits do little to actually save lives, but do much to increase corporate profits. Denying the pharmaceutical industry the ability to deduct expenditures for gifts to physicians is a solid step toward providing Americans with access to more lifesaving drugs. By redirecting drug company promotional expenditures to their R&D budgets, the American public would reap the benefit of increased medical breakthroughs. Gifts from pharmaceutical companies do not improve health care for patients. This bill I am introducing today eliminates the tax incentives currently in place that encourage drug companies to continue to give gifts to doctors to influence their prescribing. It is my hope that the industry will redirect these dollars from existing gift practices to R&D. The pharmaceutical industry claims it needs financial help to increase R&D efforts. This bill gives them billions of new dollars for precisely that purpose. I urge the pharmaceutical industry to use these funds more wisely. I hope that my colleagues will join with me in supporting this endeavor to increase investment in the research and development of life saving drugs in the private sector. [From the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2000] High-Tech Stealth Being Used To Sway Doctor Prescriptions (By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jeff Gerth) As a busy internist, Dr. Bruce Moskowitz frequently prescribes cholesterol-lowering medicines and osteoporosis drugs for his elderly patients. Like most physicians, he is no stranger to pharmaceutical sales representatives, and he often chats with them about his preference in medication. But the drug companies know more about Dr. Moskowitz than he realizes. Over the past decade, with the advent of sophisticated computer technology, pharmaceutical manufacturers have been quietly compiling resumes on the prescribing patterns of the nation's health care professionals, many of whom have no idea that their decisions are open to commercial scrutiny. These ``prescriber profiles'' are the centerpiece of an increasingly vigorous--and apparently successful--effort by drug makers to sway doctors' prescribing habits. To create them, pharmaceutical marketers are buying information from pharmacies, the federal government and the American Medical Association, which generates $20 million in annual income by selling biographies of every American doctor. The profiles do not contain patient names. But they do offer drug companies a window into one half of the doctor- patient relationship. And they are raising important public policy questions, both about the privacy of doctors' prescribing decisions, and how much commercial pressures influence them.``As an extension of the doctor-patient relationship, doctors are entitled to privacy,'' said Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in health privacy at the Georgetown University Law Center. In describing the profiles as ``a fundamental violation'' of that privacy, Mr. Gostin said they also raise ``an extremely important policy question, which is to what extent are health care prescribing practices influenced by commercial concerns?'' That question is now front and center in the political debate. With the price of prescription medication high on the national agenda, the impact of marketing on the cost of pharmaceuticals is at issue. But while the public discussion has focused largely on the recent trend toward advertising directly to patients, the industry still spends most of its money wooing doctors. Of the $13.9 billion that the drug companies spent promoting their products last year, 87 percent, or about $12 billion, was aimed at doctors and the small group of nurse practitioners and physicians' assistants who can prescribe some medications, about one million prescribers all told. ``The pharmaceutical industry has the best market research system of any industry in the world,'' said Mickey C. Smith, a professor of pharmaceutical marketing at the University of Mississippi. ``They know more about their business than people who sell coffee or toilet paper or laundry detergent because they truly have a very small group of decision makers, most of whom still are physicians.'' Pharmaceutical sales representatives have been a staple of American medicine for decades. Their courtship of doctors is intensive and expensive, and their largess runs the gamut, from trinkets like prescription pads and pens, to staff lunches at hospitals and medical offices and offers of free weekends at resorts. Prescriber profiles play a significant role in the courtship; pharmaceutical marketers say they use the reports to help determine which doctors should be offered certain perks. And the perks themselves worry ethics officials at the American Medical Association, who are trying to discourage doctors from accepting them, even as the association's business side sells information that facilitates the giving of gifts. Dr. Moskowitz, of West Palm Beach, Fla., is one example. In late August, he received an invitation from two drug companies, the Bayer Corporation and SmithKline Beecham, asking him to a private dinner at the Morton's of Chicago Steakhouse, an expensive chain restaurant not far from his West Palm Beach office, on the evening of Sept. 18. The topic was high cholesterol, including an update on Baycol, a drug the two companies jointly market. For his feedback, Dr. Moskowitz would be designated a consultant and given a $250 honorarium, along with his choice entree. He declined. ``Drug companies ask me, How can we change your prescribing, what would it take, do you want to serve as a consultant?'' Dr. Moskowitz said. ``The schemes get more and more desperate.'' Although most doctors do not believe that such entreaties affect their professional behavior, some studies suggest otherwise. Dr. Ashley Wazana, a psychiatry resident at McGill University in Montreal, recently analyzed 29 studies on the effects of gifts to doctors. Published in January in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Wazana's analysis found an association between meetings with pharmaceutical representatives and ``awareness, preference and rapid prescribing of new drugs and decreased prescribing of generics.'' His conclusion? ``We are influenceable,'' Dr. Wazana said. In an effort to save money, and also to avoid this influence, some clinics and hospitals have imposed a ban on free drug samples and visits from sales representatives and discourage doctors from taking consulting fees like the one offered by Bayer and SmithKline Beecham. Among them is the Everett Clinic in Washington State, a group practice of 180 doctors that cares for 250,000 patients. Its officials say that drug costs have declined since the ban. ``Pharmaceutical marketing would often lead to physicians prescribing more costly medicines than are necessary,'' the clinic's medical director, Dr. Al Fisk, said. But Dr. Bert Spilker, a senior vice president with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group, said marketing ``serves an essential function in the health care delivery system'' by helping to educate doctors, so they can prescribe drugs more appropriately. Drug companies, however, are often reluctant to disclose details about their marketing efforts, particularly the use of prescriber profiles. ``If we talk about what we do and how we do it,'' said Jan Weiner, a spokeswoman for Merck & Company, ``then our competitors will know a whole lot more than they know now.'' The A.M.A. Master List Singling out doctors is not new, but detailed prescriber profiles have been available only since the early 1990's, when most pharmacies adopted computer systems to process insurance claims, said Pat Glorioso, a marketing executive at I.M.S. Health, a leading pharmaceutical market research concern and one of two companies that specialize in collecting records of pharmacy sales. Through the profiles, a drug company can identify the highest and lowest prescribers of a particular medicine in a single ZIP code, county, state or the entire country. They can learn, for example, which antidepressants a particular psychiatrist favors. ``It's very flexible in the way we can slice and dice the information,'' Ms. Glojioso said. ``As technology has improved, we havejust ridden that wave.'' When pharmacies sell records of prescription drug sales, they do not show names of patients or, in some cases, their doctors. But those records are typically coded with identification numbers issued by the Drug Enforcement Administration to doctors for the purpose of tracking controlled substances. The government sells a list of the numbers, with the corresponding names attached, for fees that can nin up to $10,200 a month, depending on how widely the list will be distributed. The American Medical Association, meanwhile, sells the fights to what it calls its ``physicians' master file'' to dozens of pharmaceutical companies, as well as I.M.S. Health and other market research concerns. Though only about 40 percent of American doctors are dues-paying members of the medical association, the database has detailed personal and professional infor-mabon, including the D.E.A. number, on all doctors practicing in the United States. Pharmaceutical marketers consider Lhe master file the gold standard for reference information about doctors. Combined with the records of pharmacy sales, the file helps create portraits of individual doctors, their specialties and interests. As the nation's largest doctors' group, the medical association has maintained the master file for nearly 100 years, and has licensed it for more than 50. It is so complete, A.M.A. officials say, that even the dead are included. ``We're trying to provide a reliable database, which is accurate, so that it can be used appropriately to focus efforts on There are some restrictions, Dr. Reardon said: the roster cannot be sold to tobacco companies and it cannot be used to deceive doctors or the public. While they say sale of the master file brings about $20 million in annual income to the association, officials would not say what they charge individual companies. Much of the information in the association's database is available from sources scattered around the country. But one major element is not: the medical education number, which the A.M.A. assigns to new medical students in order to track them throughout their careers. Most doctors do not even know they have one. This number, which enables computers to sort through the huge A.M.A. master file, is ``the core element in the database of tracking physicians,'' said Douglas McKendry, a sales executive at the Acxiom Corporation, a pharmaceutical marketing company that recently formed a partnership with the medical association to manage the database. ``The A.M.A. data helps identify the individual physicians that are being targeted,'' Mr. McKendry said. Doctors who do not want their names sent to marketers can ask the association to remove them from the file, Dr. Reardon said. But in interviews, several prominent doctors said they were unaware that their biographies were being sold. Among them is Dr. Christine K. Cassel, a former president of the American College of Physicians and chairman of the department of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. In Dr. Cassel's view, information about doctors' prescribing habits may appropriately be used by their health plans to improve quality of care. She called the commercial use of the data outrageous, saying, ``This is not about quality. It's about sales.'' Dinner and a Motive Pharmaceutical marketing is big business not only for drug companies, but also for companies firms like I.M.S. Health and Acxiom, which cater to them. Overall spending on pharmaceutical promotion increased more than 10 percent last year, to $13.9 billion from $12.4 billion in 1998. Experts estimate that the companies collectively spend $8,000 to $13,000 a year per physician. In recent years, as demands on doctors' time have grown more intense, pharmaceutical marketers say they have been forced to become more creative. ``You have to have a hook,'' said Cathleen Croke, vice president of marketing for Access Worldwide Communications Inc., which specializes in drug marketing. ``if you offer them $250, that might get them. Or they are attracted to the prestige of being a consultant, that a company is asking for their opinion.'' The offer of dinner and a $250 consulting fee was sufficient to draw about a dozen South Florida physicians to Morton's in West Palm Beach on Sept. 18. They gathered there, on a muggy Monday night, in a back room called the boardroom, where a slide show and a moderator from Boron, LePore & Associates Inc., the market research firm hosting the event, awaited their arrival. Dr. Moskowitz, who has been in practice in West Palm Beach since 1978 and heads a group of 12 doctors, says he routinely receives--and rejects--such invitations. The Morton's dinner was not open to the public; had Dr. Moskowitz accepted, he would have been required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Instead, he told the companies he intended to take a reporter for The New York Times. But when Dr. Moskowitz and the reporter showed up at Morton's, the Boron LePore moderator, Alexander Credle, told them to leave. ``This is a clinical experience meeting, a therapeutic discussion,'' Mr. Credle said. ``There is an expected degree of confidentiality.'' Dr. Moskowitz asked Mr. Credle why he was invited; Mr. Credle had no answer. But in an interview a few weeks after the dinner, John Czekanski, a senior vice president at Boron LePore, said the invitations were ``based on databases targeting physicians'' who prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs or who might. Boron LePore calls these dinner sessions ``peer-to-peer meetings,'' and in 1997, it acted as host at 10,400 of them. Typically, they feature presentations from medical experts, on the theory that doctors are receptive to the views of their peers. With new drugs coming onto the market all the time, physicians are hungry for information about them. Pharmaceutical companies say it is that desire for education, rather than a free meal or modest honorarium, that draws many doctors to the meetings. But the dinners are creating unease among officials of the American Medical Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, which in 1990 published guidelines that limit what gifts doctors may accept. The guidelines, which have also been adopted by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers' Association, the drug industry trade group, prohibit token consulting arrangements. but permit ``modest meals'' that serve ``a genuine educational function.'' Compliance is voluntary, and Dr. Herbert Rakatansky, who is chairman of the A.M.A.'s ethics council, says doctors routinely ignore the rules. That is in part because they are murky, as the dinner at Morton's reveals. Whether the dinner was intended to educate doctors, or was part of a marketing campaign, or both, is not clear. In the $7.2 billion market for the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, Baycol ranks last in sales, with just $106 million in sales last year. Bayer and SmithKline Beecham recently introduced a new dosage for the drug, and the companies said ``As far as we're concerned, it's educational,'' said Carmel Logan, a spokeswoman for SmithKline Beecham. But Tig Conger, the vice president of marketing for cardiovascular products at Bayer, said the company intended to teach a select group of doctors about Baycol, then use their feedback to hone its marketing message. And Allison Wey, a spokeswoman for Boron LePore, said the dinner was ``part education and part marketing.'' Raising Ethics Question While Dr. Rakatansky, of the A.M.A., could not comment specifically on the Baycol meeting, he had harsh words for these dinners in general. ``We think 99 percent of those are shams,'' he said. ``They are marketing devices and not true requests for information,'' As to whether the dinner fit the ``modest meal'' criteria, that, too, is unclear, because the guidelines offer no specifics. At Morton's in West Palm Beach, the entrees range from $19.95 for chicken to $32.95 for filet mignon--a la carte. The sales manager, Lauren Carteris, said the restaurant frequently was the site of pharmaceutical meetings for Boron LePore. ``Doctors,'' Ms. Carteris said, ``will only go to an expensive restaurant.'' To heighten doctors' awareness about the ethics of accepting gifts, the medical association is beginning an educational campaign. In addition, The Journal of the American Medical Association devoted the bulk of its Nov. I issue to conflict of interest in medicine, including an essay entitled ``Financial Indigestion'' that questioned the effects of pharmaceutical company gifts on doctors' professional behavior. But some prominent doctors say the medical association needs to address its own role, as a seller of information that helps drug marketers select which doctors to target. ``It potentiates this gift giving, and implicitly endorses it,'' said Dr. David Blumenthal, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School who has used the A.M.A.'s data for his academic research. The sale of the master file to drug companies, Dr. Blumenthal said, ``hands the weapon to the drug company that the A.M.A. is saying is an illicit weapon.'' Dr. Reardon, the past president of the medical association, dismisses such a connection. Doctors are responsible for their own decisions about whether to accept gifts, he said, adding, ``I don't think the database has anything to do with ethical behavior of physicians.'' Dr. Reardon noted that drug marketers could obtain information about doctors from other sources, including the federal government. But Mr. Gostin, the privacy expert at Georgetown, who is also the health law and ethics editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, said that did not justify the association's action. ``We live in a society where, if you comb long enough and hard enough with sophisticated enough search tools, you can find just about everything,'' Mr. Gostin said. ``That doesn't mean it's all right for people to assemble it, make it easy and sell it.'' As for Dr. Moskowitz, he is still receiving invitations from drug companies, despite his longstanding habit of spuming them. One arrived on Oct. 18, from Aventis Pharmaceuticals and Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, who jointly market Actonel, an osteoporosis drug. Attendance at the meeting, scheduled for Saturday , will be limited to 12 doctors, the invitation said. Breakfast and lunch will be served; in between, there will be a clinical discussion of osteoporosis, with 30 minutes reserved for doctors' feedback. The honorarium is $1,000.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 468, designating the James C. Corman Federal Building. Jim Corman was a true statesman who served his constituents in California, and indeed, the people of the United States, with great distinction. Jim cared passionately for the poor and worked to see that their interests were heard in Washington. He was one of the great leaders in the Congress seeking health insurance for all and he worked hard to enact a decent, humane social policy for the disadvantaged. Jim rejected the voices in Congress who seek to help those already blessed with wealth while neglecting those who cannot put food on their tables. ``I don't think there is anything uplifting about hunger,'' he once said. Jim was a tireless advocate for the uninsured and he passed on his sense of passion to his colleagues, including me. When I was first assigned to the House Ways and Means Committee, Jim taught me ``how things were done.'' I am grateful to have served with Jim Corman and I know his constituents were grateful for his service. Naming this federal building after Jim Corman is a proper tribute to a man who dedicated his life to public service. Jim will be best remembered, however, for his tireless work on behalf of those who are less fortunate.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Tauscher, Mr. George Miller of California and myself would like to take this time to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of a very special man, Timothy John Lynch, Senior. His memory will be honored this weekend, when a memorial redwood and plaque will be dedicated to him at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Pleasant Hill Parks and Recreation District. Born July 20, 1917 in San Francisco to Irish immigrant parents, Timothy grew up in the Irish Castro District of the City. He left his home state during World War II and served as captain and bombardier instructor in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was married for 57 years to Mary-Louise Leach, and was the proud father of seven children, eighteen grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren. In 1950, Timothy moved his family from San Francisco to Pleasant Hill, California. During that very same year, he helped to build a community fit for his family and friends. He realized the need for a community park and worked alongside two other Pleasant Hill citizens to help raise funds to purchase the original land known today as the Pleasant Hill Park. Active in the Catholic Church his entire life, he also helped to establish Christ the King Catholic Parish, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. Shortly after settling in Pleasant Hill, Timothy served as a member and chairman of the Founding Board. He was elected and reelected to serve on the board of trustees for the Pleasant Hill Parks & Recreation Department. Appointed to the Contra Costa Planning Commission, he made history as the first to represent the area that would later become the City of Pleasant Hill. Timothy also made efforts to contribute to education. He served as a member on both the President's Advisory Council and the College President's Fundraising Committee at St. Mary's College of California. Timothy worked in the private sector as Vice President of a major San Francisco Bay Area wholesale liquor distributor. After retiring, he volunteered thirty hours per week in his community at Kaiser Hospital, and at the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center as head liaison for surgery and recovery until his death. A lifelong active member of the Democratic Party, he placed his ideals alongside those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He served on Representative Jerome Waldie's ``kitchen cabinet'' during Waldie's terms in the California State Legislature and United States Congress. He continued to work for Waldie during his campaign for governor of California. Timothy John Lynch, Sr. was an example of a model citizen for all. His tireless efforts to make a positive impact in his community, his state, and his country are evident. We ask our colleagues to join us in paying tribute to this great person, wonderful character, and community leader.

Mr. STARK

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield half of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), who supports the resolution.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and ask unanimous consent that he be allowed to control the time.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, many might view this debate as an exercise in futility as China has already received permanent normal trade relations status. But I see it as an opportunity to recall some of the false arguments made on behalf of granting permanent normal trade relations to the People's Republic of China and to reflect back on the progress China has made in becoming a global trade partner worthy of normal trade relations status. Last year when we debated the relations with China, we heard all kind of horrific scenarios from the industries that support this about the threats of what would happen to the American economy if we did not grant permanent trade relations to China. For instance, in May, 2000, Motorola ran a full-page ad in Roll Call and had a picture of the Motorola flip phone, like so many of us carry, and it said, ``If we do not sell products to China, someone else will.'' They contended in their ad that, of course, these phones were made by Motorola. They falsely said that this would mean China's markets would not be open to U.S. exports. Well, less than a year after the enactment, Motorola shut down its only U.S. manufacturing plant and moved the manufacturing jobs to China. There are many, many anecdotes to that. We just sold out too cheap. The argument, if we do not sell products to China, China will sell them to us, that is the argument that Motorola should have used. They made promises with respect to weapons which they have not kept. They have made promises with respect to human rights which they have not kept. And we, like a bunch of chumps, have bought into that argument and allowed China to run roughshod over human rights, over American dignity, over American jobs. Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to support this resolution, to end this charade that these people are doing anything that would help America or that they voluntarily will increase human rights on their part. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.