Another Deadly Cancer That’s Potentially Been Tamed By Globalization

“In my 30 years of oncology, we haven’t talked about curing myeloma.” Those are the words of University of North Carolina professor of cancer policy, Norman Sharpless, as reported in the New York Times. For those who don’t know, multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that’s long been known as incurable.

Which raises a question: what would readers do if they received a multiple myeloma diagnosis? It’s no reach to say that most of us would ask the doctor relaying the horrible news if there’s any hope, any possible cure, or any possible cure anywhere. This would particularly be true with myeloma since the traditional path to death within a year of diagnosis is described by the Times as “extremely painful.”

Enter Legend Biotech. The Times reports that the immunotherapy developed there loomed as a “last-ditch” option five years ago for close to 100 myeloma patients. The encouraging, beautiful news is that a third emerged from what was traditionally a death sentence alive and cancer free.

To say that what’s happening at Legend Biotech is an exciting development insults understatement. Finally some progress in beating what’s always been a killer. And the progress is hopefully a sign that we’re on the doorstep of many more remarkable leaps. Which requires another pause.

Though Legend is based in Somerset, NJ, its origins are Chinese. It raises a question: would readers facing death refuse the treatments developed by Legend, or some other pharmaceutical corporation operating in China? One assumes the question answers itself. On matters of life and death, there’s a natural tendency among humans to do whatever it takes to survive, particularly if they have children.

It’s just a comment that when death stares us in the face, no pause is required. We’re wired to search far and wide for whatever will keep us upright.

The main thing is that while Legend is now New Jersey-based, it still has operations in China. Good. The more that the world is economically integrated, the better off we all are. In other words, it’s not a “national security” threat when great leaps of the AI, financial, or pharmaceutical variety are hatched somewhere not the United States.

Figure that if trading lanes are open, it’s as though the world’s greatest products, services and cures are all being created right next door. And when market goods are crossing borders without regard to country origin, war of the shooting and bombing kind becomes frightfully expensive.

Looked at in tax terms, Legend’s global footprint is hopefully a reminder to U.S. tax writers that when it comes to innovative developments meant to cure some of the worst diseases, it’s extraordinarily mistaken to tax “Made in America” more favorably than “Made Around the World.” The more that U.S. pharmaceutical companies avail themselves of global talent, the much better that American drugs will be. And the more that tax policy is neutral as applied to the global nature of U.S. corporations, the more easily they’ll be able to acquire the best of the best globally.

The simple, and ultimately life-saving truth is that productivity is an effect of cooperation across as many hands, machines, and machines that think as possible. Drugs aren’t unique in this regard. The more specialized cooperation in the development of moon-shot style cures, the quicker the arrival at the cure.

Sharpless went on to tell the Times that “This is the first time we are really talking seriously about cures in one of the worst malignancies imaginable.” The brilliant fruits of tessellated talents at opposite sides of the world.

It’s just something to remember. Cliched though it may sound, there’s no limit to progress when specialized genius is combined. Let’s not allow tax writers to erect barriers to this collaboration solely because genius occasionally has a foreign address.