Source http://crasecrets.com/
There is no crisis in pharmaceutical innovation, reads a controversial one item published on BMJ extension from Donald Light, professor of social medicine and comparative health care at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey e Joel Lexchin, Professor of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto.
The real crisis, the authors argue, is in a system that rewards pharmaceutical companies for developing new products that offer little, if any, therapeutic benefit over existing ones with the aim of maintaining a constant and stable profit stream.
According to them, the scarcity of funds available for research is not the result of the crisis, but of precise company policies, who invest in research at a ratio of 1:19 to what they invest in marketing campaigns, the promotion of which can even represent 80% (!!!) of the pharmaceutical expenditure of a state.
The two scientists also argue that talking about the innovation crisis to politicians and the press is only a ploy aimed at obtaining protections from governments to avoid competition from the free market. “Companies exaggerate development costs focusing on a self-affirmation of rising costs without mentioning the extraordinary gains,” write Light and Lexchin.
To change this status quo, the article reads, regulators should avoid continued approval of drugs with little therapeutic value: “European countries are paying billions more than necessary for medicines that provide few health benefits, because the prices are not proportional to their real clinical value”. Furthermore, they conclude, the evaluation of new drugs should be public and independent of the pharmaceutical companies themselves and should reward innovation.
Related news: http://www.federaisf.
