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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 353

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

Light DW, Lexchin J.
Will lower drug prices jeopardize drug research? A policy fact sheet
Am J Bioeth 2004 Winter; 4:(1):1-4
http://bioethics.net/journal/j_articles.php?aid=61


Abstract:

This documented fact sheet provides evidence that all drug research by large firms, net of taxpayers’ subsidies, is paid for out of domestic sales in each country, with profits to spare. Prices can be lower without jeopardizing basic research for new drugs. More exposure to global price competition would encourage more innovative research and less of the derivative me-too research that now dominates.

This documented fact sheet provides evidence that all drug research by large firms, net of taxpayers’ subsidies, is paid for out of domestic sales in each country, with profits to spare. Prices can be lower without jeopardizing basic research for new drugs. More exposure to global price competition would encourage more innovative research and less of the derivative me-too research that now dominates.

In the U.S., the FDA Commissioner, Mark McClellan, and the drug industry are responding to pressures for lower costs by mounting a large campaign to pressure all other affluent countries to raise their prices to U.S. levels. They claim that lower prices do not pay for drug research costs, but we provide evidence that this is untrue. Ultimately, however, such nationalistic arguments are based on regarding basic research and new discoveries, which can happen anywhere, and the cost of trials, which are carried out in the countries deemed most commercially advantageous, as part of national companies and national accounts, when in fact they are part of a global economy for pharmaceutical products.

 

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...to influence multinational corporations effectively, the efforts of governments will have to be complemented by others, notably the many voluntary organisations that have shown they can effectively represent society’s public-health interests…
A small group known as Healthy Skepticism; formerly the Medical Lobby for Appropriate Marketing) has consistently and insistently drawn the attention of producers to promotional malpractice, calling for (and often securing) correction. These organisations [Healthy Skepticism, Médecins Sans Frontières and Health Action International] are small, but they are capable; they bear malice towards no one, and they are inscrutably honest. If industry is indeed persuaded to face up to its social responsibilities in the coming years it may well be because of these associations and others like them.
- Dukes MN. Accountability of the pharmaceutical industry. Lancet. 2002 Nov 23; 360(9346)1682-4.