Professor Silvio Garattini, 90, founder of the Mario Negri Institute, has long argued that "half of medicines are useless, one pill out of two is useless". The reason? «There are dozens of pharmaceutical products on the market of the same active ingredient, which differ only in the label. All this is not used to cure the sick, but to inflate the profits of pharmaceutical companies". An example? A scientific research 
Unfortunately, it is a power surrounded by shadows and disturbing suspicions. Suffice it to say that the 2020 EMA budget, out of a total of 358 million euros, is covered for 307 million (84%) by contributions from pharmaceutical companies and just 51 million from European Union funds. Data unearthed and published by Mario Giordano in his beautiful book (Sciacalli, virus, salute and money; Mondadori). Numbers that demonstrate how, in the EU pharmaceutical sector, the subsidiary (Big Pharma) actually controls the controller (EMA), and influences every single decision on the drugs to be placed on the European market.
Indeed, thanks to the millions paid, Big Pharma has the privilege of participating in EMA meetings through its own lawyer. By law, EMA's assessments of a new drug must be based on three parameters: safety, efficacy, quality. Which is the minimum. But if a drug duplicates a previous one, is it really necessary? Well, this question is useless to ask during EMA meetings. "I tried," a former EMA member told Giordano. «I raised my hand and asked: are we sure that this new drug is necessary? Does it add something new? Do you care better than others? Every time the lawyer of the pharmaceutical companies, always present at the sessions, blocked me: the law does not provide for this evaluation». And of course he had won.
It is therefore no coincidence that in twenty years the EMA has authorized 975 new drugs, while those rejected every year can be counted on the fingers of one hand (five in 2018). With 36 directors and 890 employees, EMA is a bandwagon 
Afterthoughts? Counterattack by the Italian government? Zero. Thus the municipality of Amsterdam, with the connivance of the Brussels bureaucrats, had plenty of time to build a brand new headquarters in the suburbs, where the EMA moved calmly, but at a high price. The English High Court of Justice has indeed sentenced the EU drug agency to pay until 2039 the rent it had stipulated for the London headquarters with a leading real estate group, which did not want to hear about rescinding the leasing contract . And the British press has quantified the total cost of the sentence for the EMA at between 470 and 574 million euros, a sum far higher than its annual budget.
For this reason, it will be really interesting to find out, in some time, which pocket the millions will come from to face the sentence: the EU budget 2021-27, still under discussion, or the Big Pharma companies, in exchange for the usual favors, will take charge of them ? Mario Giordano has calculated that the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world have a turnover of 408 billion euros a year, three times Hungary's domestic product, 250 times Gambia's GDP. The answer to who will pay, you can bet, will come accordingly. Which does not mean that the European pharmaceutical bounty continues to be a very serious political problem, where Big Pharma counts more than sovereign states and the EU itself, so that its profits count more than the protection of the health of European citizens: a question made even more urgent by the Covid-19 pandemic, but culpably ignored by governments and newspapers across the European Union.
Article published on ItalyToday
Start Magazine – 12 settembre 2020
Editor's note:
Someone, evidently misunderstanding and not knowing our story, complains that the article reported on Big Pharma's funding to the EMA would put the ISFs in a "bad light" and could cause them serious employment damage.
It is good to specify the following.
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The fact that the ISFs also work for Big Parma does not mean that they are Big Pharma. It is precisely our silence about it that could be exploited by our detractors who could accuse us of complicity demonstrated by the aforementioned silence.
Fedaiisf non ha nulla a che fare con il “sistema” delle aziende farmaceutiche né con le connessioni che esse instaurano con chi dovrebbe controllarle. Tanto è vero che denunciamo continuamente le incongruenze e le contraddizioni di tutto il Sistema sanitario. Questo nell’interesse del Servizio sanitario e quindi del cittadino.
However, we have a duty to say how things stand. Always, even if we don't like them
Nel merito specifico dell’articolo riportato. Rasi, Direttore EMA, ebbe a dichiarare: “Noi lavoriamo su un primo livello, che definisce il beneficio-rischio di un trattamento, Il secondo livello è quello dell’Hta, Health technology assessment, cioè della definizione del valore relativo di un farmaco o di un qualsiasi intervento terapeutico. Il terzo livello serve a valutare qual è il valore aggiunto terapeutico di un trattamento per definirne il prezzo. Mentre sul beneficio-rischio sappiamo bene che dati vogliamo per autorizzare un farmaco, per ammetterlo alla rimborsabilità i vari sistemi nazionali devono sapere come performa questo farmaco rispetto ad altri. Il problema è che questa evidenza noi non la possiamo richiedere, la possono richiedere gli Stati membri”
L'Public EMA the following: For 2020, the total budget of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) amounts to €358.1 million. Some 86% of the Agency's budget comes from fees and charges, 14% from the European Union (EU) contribution to public health matters and less than 1% from other sources.
Of the total budget, approximately €306.8 million will come from fees and charges collected for regulatory services; around €51.0 million in revenue from the EU is also expected, mainly in support of policies for orphan and pediatric drugs, advanced therapies and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
Fees from industry: The Agency charges a fee for processing applications from companies that want to bring a medicine to market. It also charges fees for services related to the marketing of medicines in the EU in areas such as scientific advice, inspections and setting maximum residue limits. For more information, see Fees payable to the EMA.
Nel 2020, inoltre si stima che 126,3 milioni di euro saranno versati alle agenzie nazionali di regolamentazione dei medicinali dal bilancio dell’Agenzia quale compenso alle autorità nazionali per il lavoro e per il coinvolgimento dei loro membri del personale nei comitati scientifici, nei gruppi di lavoro e in altre attività dell’Agenzia.
Quindi i circa 307 milioni delle Industria a EMA non sono proprio contributi, ma commissioni e oneri riscossi per servizi di regolamentazione. Un occhio con una visione preconcetta riporta che EMA è finanziata da Big Pharma, ma lo stesso si può dire di FDA o, in altro settore, che la Banca d’Italia è finanziata dalle banche che deve controllare.