R&D is not the reason drugs are expensive

[peabody]

This article was in the L.A. Times a few days ago
about the high cost of prescription drugs. It's
an interview with the ex-editor of the New England
Journal of Medicine regarding the price of prescription
drugs, and what the drug companies really do that
drives these drug costs up. Very informative.

<SNIP>
For more than a decade, physician Marcia Angell served as executive editor and then editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the country's most prestigious medical journals. Under her watch, the journal published hundreds of studies of new drugs. It also published blunt editorials harshly critical of the pharmaceutical industry and the way drugs are tested and approved in the United States.

Question: We all know drugs are expensive. But doesn't that reflect the high cost of researching and developing new drugs?

Answer: No. That's what the drug makers would like you to think. But it's simply not true. In 2002, the biggest drug companies spent only about 14% of sales on research and development and 31% on what most of them call marketing and administration. They consistently make more in profits than they spend in R&D. And their profits are immense. In 2002, the combined profits of the 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 were $35.9 billion. That's more than the profits for all the other 490 business put together, if you subtract losses from gains.

Q: The system may be flawed, but hasn't it generated hundreds of new medications?

A: That's another myth the drug makers would like you to believe. In fact, the number of truly innovative new drugs is quite small. True, many drugs are coming to market. But most of them aren't new at all. They are minor variations of bestselling drugs that are already on the market.

There are dozens of examples of these "me-too" drugs. There are now six different statins to lower cholesterol. The first, Mevacor, which was approved in 1987, was indeed an innovative drug. Other companies wanted to capitalize on this extremely lucrative market and they began creating other statins. Lipitor is now the biggest-selling drug in the world. But it's a me-too drug. There's little scientific evidence that any of them is better than the others in comparable doses

<SNIP>


Read the rest before the drug companies make them take the article down:

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-angell9aug09,1,350861.story?coll=la-home-health

[xray s]

1. great article, thanks!

The 14% of sales R&D figure is effectively even lower than it seems as far as innovative new drugs are concerned because the article points out most of that R&D is being used to develop me-too drugs. Why do they do that? To make profits. And the easiest way to make money is through bogus marketing. Especially in an area where the consumer has little or no expertise, like pharmaceuticals.

[question everything]

2. I could accept the argument, were our TV programs not filled with ads

for erectile dysfunction. A 30 sec air during the Super Bowl cost $2.5 million. How many minutes were there for various drugs, but mostly for the ED ones? And they keep airing.

Thus, before the pharmaceutical houses start crying about the cost of drugs, let them open the books and reveal how much they spend on marketing and advertising - drugs that one needs a prescription, anyway.'

CNN Headline News this morning invited emails about this and one caught my ear. It said that we encourage the importation of many cheap products. Supposedly, that's why we moved so many jobs overseas. So why should drugs be different?

I also agree with the one, that took offense about Canadian drugs may not be safe. They are safe for Canadians, after all.

[peabody]

4. Yup, the air waves are

full of drug ads, and now they have ads for conditions that once was considered normal, or just a part of our biology. Like the article says, to create this kind of market you need to do a lot of marketing which requires a lot of money--a sum that's passed on to the consumer.

[Djinn]

9. too true

When I worked in media monitoring I quickly came to realise how badly Pharmaceutical companies warp the information we hear - we'd get the embargoed press releases they'd send to various media outlets then a couple of days later the release was a lead story on most medium - pratically word for word. An example - Australia has a drug subsidy system that provides for the most effective and needed drugs to be subsidised by the taxpayer. The vaccine for a particular disease wasn't subsidised as it was relatively rare - suddenly it seemed as if cases were springing up everywhere in the media - most people would have been forgiven for thinking there was an outbreak and subsequently people began to pressure the government for the vaccine to be listed to save their kids from this "increasing" threat. The government caved.

The incidence had not changed in 50 years - every single one of the original flurry of reports had been placed in the media by the company that made the vaccine (listing increases their profits as that drug's market share goes up) then the media picked it up and ran because it was a classic "what every parent should know" story.

It was depressing to watch how easy it was for them to manipulate public policy and spending.

Pharm's also try to convince people that THEY pay for the R & D - mostly it's carried out by taxpayer funded universities and research bodies.

As mentioned in this thread they mainly concentrate on developing slight variations of older drugs they already know work. They also only research stuff that makes a profit - the drugs that you buy to treat your kids rare disease come courtesy of your own pocket, Big Pharma spends it's money on more lifesaving neccesities like cures for baldness and impotence - which is fair they are after all a business BUT they should stop acting like they're doing us all a favour.

[peabody]

10. And I don't know how to fight them

on it. Their manipulation of the media is so strong that so many people are taken in by it. And it's just not the media they manipulate, it's also the patent system, the government, and even the consumers themselves.

[Djinn]

11. I've always been fairly familiar with the media manipulation

but even I didn't realise just how bad it was till I saw it from the inside. When people see and medical doctors and Professors speaking about something they tend to assume that they are working under the parameters of the Hippocratic oath - most of the spokes-docs unfortunately are working for a Pharmacuetical corporation and you have to always ask "who's paying the piper".

I think the answer lies in better government, a government that wont be beholden to corporate bribes and manipulation - but for that to happen we have to demand that from our governments or vote them out until they start listening.

[bvar22]

3. I know how thwey could save millions.

Fire their lobbyists and pass on the savings to the public.

[Toby109]

6. "First, we kill all the lobbyists"

Sounds like a good start.

[whistle]

5. The pay-offs to doctors and medical academics by drug....

...companies is astronomical. The medical system in the United States is even more corrupt than the political system and it's all about money. But, that's been the case for many generations, so why should this day and age be any different? In 30 years, perhaps the computer industry will be engaged in similar practices and our grandchildren will be discussing this very same issue on FU.com (www.facismunderground.com) about their computer chip brain implants:wtf:

[peabody]

8. What blows my mind is

that the drug companies got almost everyone believing that it's the R&D that's really the main reason why drug prices are so high. A brother of my friend is working on his PHD in engineering at the University of Texas; and as smart as he is he buys into the drug companies' excuses too. And get a load of this: when I mentioned that the government should be able to buy drugs in bulk like Canada to help lower the costs he said that if the drug companies didn't let the Canadian government buy in bulk, the Canadians would just clone the drugs! And this from someone able to get into a PHD program?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. If drugs are expensive because of R&D,

then why did the cost of a 60 Allegra tablets (non-drowsy antihistamine) go from $57 when I started taking them, all the way to $83 over a period of three years?

You can bet that ever since Claritin went generic, I have not even considered using Allegra again. In fact, I even buy Walgreen's knock-off of Claritin, which was on sale recently for a price that equaled 10 cents a pill. And yes, I stocked up. :-)

[DrWeird]

12. Developing a new drug costs about 2 billion dollars.

With a 'b'.

That's just the R&D. It's increased several fold in the last several years due to increased complexity of the field, and a general accelaration of the process.

But I'm not an expert on the process. I'm only a synthetic organic chemist.

[peabody]

13. I'm not sure about that.

That seems to be the figure drug companies throw out but they don't allow anybody to see their R&D records. They fought and won a 9 year battle against the GAO to keep their records private so how are we suppose to know for sure? There's a great, but long, article at Public Citizen about this.

http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7065