In accordance with a latest information article, Huge Pharma spends virtually double the quantity on promoting as on analysis and growth. Of the $235.4 billion home gross sales earnings in 2004, 24.4% went to promotion, and a mere 13.4% went to analysis and growth. However, they preserve arising with extra medicine – a lot of which require drug detox and, in some circumstances even drug rehab, to stop.
How do they handle to maintain new medicine coming at us like bullets from a machine gun whereas maintaining R & D prices down? Reality be instructed, they often simply make minor alterations – not even enhancements – within the outdated ones.
However why would they need to do this? It looks as if such a waste of cash.
In accordance with Marcia Angell, former New England Journal of Drugs Editor-in-Chief, now Senior Lecturer within the Division of Social Drugs at Harvard Medical College, and creator of The Reality In regards to the Drug Firms: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, “The good majority of “new” medicine should not new in any respect however merely variations of older medicine already in the marketplace. These are known as “me-too” medicine. The thought is to seize a share of a longtime, profitable market by producing one thing similar to a top-selling drug. For example, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the most recent, Crestor) in the marketplace to decrease ldl cholesterol, all variants of the primary.”
Statins – medicine generally used to manage ldl cholesterol – aren’t among the many listing of medicine that require drug detox, however many different sorts of medicine are. Painkillers like Köp smärtstillande piller, morphine and methadone, for instance, usually require a medical drug detox for withdrawal. The identical is true for most of the 176 totally different antidepressants, antipsychotics and antianxiety drugs.
Dr. Angell additionally quotes Dr. Sharon Levine, affiliate government director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group: “If I am a producer and I can change one molecule and get one other twenty years of patent rights, and persuade physicians to prescribe and shoppers to demand the following type of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac as a substitute of day by day Prozac, simply as my patent expires, then why would I be spending cash on so much much less sure endeavor, which is on the lookout for brand-new medicine?”
Why, certainly? Maybe Huge Pharma is making an attempt to maintain the R & D prices down so the businesses can afford to pay settlements to the households of those that have died taking their medicine. Or maybe they’re utilizing it to re-pay the Federal or State governments for the cash spent caring for individuals who landed in hospital emergency wards, morgues or in drug detox or drug rehab facilities after they overdosed, grew to become addicted, or dependent.
Little question the ethics of Huge Pharma as a complete is in query. And the American public is paying for it: Tens of millions of ruined lives, exorbitant well being care prices, well-intentioned docs really going out of enterprise due to the excessive value of malpractice insurance coverage.
Medication are ruining our lives, our well being, and our well being care system. To actually deal with the issue, we now have to cease taking pointless medicine. We have now to get those that are taking medicine that could be addictive or trigger dependency right into a drug detox program that may assist them get off them, we have to educate others on their risks, and discover different options.