by Chrissy Buteas, President and Chief Executive Officer
HealthCare Institute of New Jersey (HINJ)
Trenton, October 31, 2024 ― I write in response to your editorial published on October 27. The piece was unfortunate in its significant misrepresentation and vastly oversimplified portrayal of one of the most transformative and life-saving industries in human history – the biopharmaceutical, medical technology, and diagnostics sector that comprises our state’s life sciences. This is an industry that has saved more lives – including those of our grandmothers – over the last century than any other, increasing life expectancy by more than 20 years. Despite the Star-Ledger’s depiction, we help patients live longer, with less pain, with more independence and with greater hope.
New Jersey is very fortunate to have a Congressional Delegation that takes a sincere, thoughtful and intelligent approach toward the extraordinarily complex policies and landscape of our American healthcare system. This is a Delegation that is committed to advancing cures, treatments and technologies that save lives in New Jersey and around the world. While we might not always agree on the exact policies that perfect this life-saving ecosystem, we are grateful to all of our Delegation members on both sides of the aisle for their serious and balanced approach to legislating.
And it’s not just our federal representatives who demonstrate bold leadership on patient care and innovation. Our state policymakers, our patient advocates, our organized labor leaders, our academic community, our health care providers, our broader business community and so many other constituencies that comprise New Jersey’s robust health care and innovation ecosystem. These collective partnerships, regardless of political affiliation or misleading editorials, are what work together to preserve New Jersey’s global leadership in advancing human health.
Our leaders – Democrats and Republicans, federal and state, from North, Central and South Jersey – have approached these exceedingly complex healthcare decisions with reasoned, thoughtful, balanced approaches to policy that aren’t recognized in the Star-Ledger’s editorial. Our policymakers are a big part of the reason that we and our loved ones can survive diagnoses and conditions that were life-ending only a few short years ago.
Over the past two decades alone, together we have made astonishing advances in human health: curing hepatitis C; developing a vaccine against cervical cancer; the first-ever treatment to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s; COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines; the first cell-based gene therapies that cure sickle cell disease; life-saving advances HIV/AIDS treatments; obesity medicines that are transforming heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other medical conditions – the list goes on. Our elected officials in Washington and Trenton on both sides of the aisle sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with us on policy, but they are never shy about challenging us. They remain steadfast partners in the fight to eradicate disease and save lives around the world.