Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18270

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

Dobson R
Lack of new drugs is reaching crisis point, says review
BMJ 2003 Jan 18; 326:(7381):119
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/326/7381/119

Abstract:

The number of new drugs approved in the United States last year fell to half the annual average over the past five years.

Only 15 new drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002, compared with a five year annual average of 31, says an editorial in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (2003:2:3).

It warns that the fall in the number of new drugs is reaching crisis point and says that new drug applications are down worldwide.

It says that the European parliament’s environment committee has asked Thomas Lonngren, executive director of the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products, to explain the fall in the number of applications.

“The miserable tally of new drug approvals in 2002—-at the time of writing, just 15 new molecular entities had passed FDA review—-well down even on the depressingly low average for the last five years—-31 a year, shows just how . . .