Senator Thom Tillis, John Stanford Co-Author Op-ed in Fortune

In a recent opinion piece, Incubate Executive Director John Stanford and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) took to the pages of Fortune with a clear warning: America’s leadership in life sciences innovation is not guaranteed. Policies that undermine intellectual property protections, distort market incentives, or inject uncertainty into the biotech ecosystem risk driving investment -- and the next generation of cures -- overseas. 

As global competitors aggressively court biotech capital and talent, the United States cannot afford policies that weaken the foundations of medical innovation. As Stanford and Tillis argue, free-market principles, strong IP protections, and regulatory predictability remain essential to sustaining America’s innovation edge and delivering lifesaving treatments to patients.

Fortune:

Or consider proposals to import foreign price controls on prescription drugs. Europe and Japan once led the world in pharmaceutical innovation. That's not the reality today, in large part because price controls reduced the incentive to invest in new treatments. 

There's no reason to believe that adopting similar policies in the United States would produce a different outcome. In fact, economists estimate such policies could cut research investment nearly in half, delaying or preventing the development of hundreds of new medicines over the next decade, meaning fewer treatments for patients who depend on them.