Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11748

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Reaves ND.
A model of effective health policy: the 1983 Orphan Drug Act.
J Health Soc Policy 2003; 17:(4):61-71
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=PubMed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17824591

Abstract:

There was a new pharmaceutical policy enacted in 1983 known as the Orphan Drug Act. It was designed to increase the availability of drugs used to treat rare diseases. In the decade prior to 1983, only ten orphan drugs had been marketed. Since 1983, over 200 orphan drugs have been marketed and over 800 have entered the regulatory pipeline. This paper examines a case of government regulation that industry, patients and politicians view as a resounding success. This policy should serve as a model of how to encourage innovation in other under-served areas.

Keywords:
MeSH Terms: Health Policy* Orphan Drug Production/legislation & jurisprudence* United States

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
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we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909