Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1059

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Publication type: news

Templeton S.
Drugs firms 'cure the rich' claim
Sunday Herald 2003 Apr 20

Full text:

The pharmaceutical industry cannot be trusted to develop new drugs for 90% of the world’s sick, a Nobel prize winner has claimed.

In an outspoken attack on drug companies, Sir John Sulston, who led the British element of the Human Genome Project, accused the industry of having a ‘hidden agenda’ of making money at the expense of curing disease.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, he hinted that a nationalised drug industry is necessary to transform research on the human genome into new treatments for diseases such as Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

Sir John said we have to ‘change the system’ and not depend on private companies to find new treatments for the majority of illnesses. He pointed out that 90% of the world’s disease burden receives just 10% of drug companies’ research and development budgets. He also highlighted the industry spends three times as much marketing its products as it does researching them.

‘I want to pose the question of what exactly we get from ‘for profit’ research,’ said Sir John. ‘Because these people are working in the commercial arena they will go for things that sell — that means the things that rich people want.

‘So, if you are a typical rich person — are depressed, have high cholesterol, are ulcerated, arthritic, hyper-tense and allergic — then you have many products available to you. If you are in a developing country suffering from tuberculosis or malaria, then just 10% of the research will go on your 90% problem. So, we cannot drive things in that way.

‘Companies have to make money. They absolutely have to make money, because otherwise they would be bought out by a rival that makes more money than they do. The scientist’s job is to discover, otherwise the scientist is out of the lab. Publish or perish.

‘If we run things purely with this sector then there is no way that we can work on diseases that have no market. I think we want to find ways of driving these other sectors, not in competition, because they can be completely co-operative, but driving these other sectors in a way that things that do not have markets get paid attention to. We do need ways of conducting research and development that are not purely market driven.’

Sir John also blamed pharmaceutical companies for a lack of public trust in science.

‘We are losing trust in science,’ he said. ‘Personally, I think an awful lot of it has to do with hidden agendas, and particularly this market-driven hidden agenda that more and more science is being funded in this way.’

Sir John led the 500-strong team at the Sanger Institute which, as part of the international Human Genome Project, sequenced a third of the human genome. He was speaking at a debate last week chaired by Dr Donald Bruce, director of the Church of Scotland’s Society, Religion and Technology Project.

‘Sir John Sulston was saying that the whole system needs rethinking because the system as we have it cannot deliver what everyone thinks the human genome will bring,’ said Dr Bruce.

But Spiro Rombotis, chief executive of Cyclacel, the Scottish biotech company founded by cancer expert Sir David Lane to develop a new generation of cancer drugs, hit back in defence of drug firms. He argued that, while academics are motivated by the publication of papers in prestigious journals, industry concentrates on bringing new treatments to patients as quickly as possible.

‘Unlike academics who aspire to the glory of the next scientific paper, we are in a great hurry to get novel drugs to the bedside or face bank-ruptcy,’ he said.