About 15 years ago, I traveled to Nutley, N.J., to interview a molecular biologist at Hoffmann-La Roche. I vividly recall my host waving at an impressive little skyline of buildings worthy of a college quadrangle and proudly saying, "Valium built all this." As recently as a month ago, when I visited the gleaming research and development complex of SmithKline Beecham just outside Philadelphia, my scientific host waved at an expanse of tinted-glass buildings and explained, "Tagamet paid for all of this."

I'm sure they say the same thing in Indianapolis about Prozac, and in various townships of New Jersey about Claritin and Lipitor, each of which racked up annual worldwide sales in excess of $2 billion in recent years. For many years, Big Pharma has had a bottom-line love affair with Big Drugs-blockbusters that generate billions of dollars in sales each year.