The 80% of medicines produced in the last 50 years has provided little benefit: is the thesis supported by two researchers in an analysis published in the British Medical Journal. According to another independent study, the ratio of basic research to marketing is 1:19
Of Science planet for the Fact | 16 August 2012
Other than the crisis of pharmaceutical innovation. The search for new medicines is stalled only because companies do not want to risk investing in truly new medicines, but only in useless variations of old products. The real crisis of innovation in drug research therefore concerns the "bad habit" of rewarding companies that produce new products that have no clinical advantage over existing ones. This is the thesis supported by Donald Light of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Joel Lexchin of York University of Toronto in an analysis published in the British Medical Journal.
Since the early 2000s, numerous articles and reports have claimed that the amount of new drugs being produced is drastically declining. However, the data would indicate that the number of new medicines authorized is stable at an average of 15-25 per year. According to the two researchers, there is so much talk of the pharmaceutical innovation crisis only because "it serves as a ploy to attract a wide range of state protections from free market competition". But the result is also the uncontrolled proliferation of new products that bring no benefit to patients. In fact, independent analyzes have shown that over the last 50 years or so 85-90% of all new drugs have provided little benefit and have done considerable harm. And while the industry emphasizes the amount of money spent on drug discovery, in reality most of the research money goes into developing dozens of minor variations that produce a steady stream of profits.
Instead of relying on the creation of truly new and useful medicines, according to Light and Lexchin, 80% of a nation's pharmaceutical expenditure would be devoted to the promotion of drugs similar to others already on the market for some time. Another independent analysis concluded that only 1.3% of a pharmaceutical company's revenues are from
