ROME, AUGUST 17 - About 85% of the new drugs, ie more than 4 out of 5, placed on the market offer little or no new benefits to the patient and instead increase the risk of adverse effects. This is what emerged from the analysis of a series of data and studies conducted by Donald Light, a sociologist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, who is about to publish the book 'The Risk of Prescription Drugs' published by Columbia University Press. The analysis, based on data obtained from independent bodies such as the Canadian Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, the Food and Drug Administration, Prescrire International, was presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association underway in Atlanta. "Many times pharmaceutical companies hide or minimize the adverse effects of new drugs while exaggerating their supposed benefits," explain the sociologists who conducted the analysis. The pharmaceutical one, underlines Light, is a classic example of a 'lemon market', ie an unbalanced situation in which the buyer has less information on the product purchased than the seller. For example, the analysis showed that out of 111 requests for final approval of a drug, 42% lacked adequate clinical trials, 40% showed violations in dosage tests, 39% lacked evidence of clinical efficacy, 49% left suspect the risk of serious adverse effects, explains Light. A series of changes would be needed, he concludes, which could improve the quality of clinical trials and tests on the real risks and benefits of new drugs; we could thus also increase the percentage of new drugs that are actually better than their predecessors”.
Ansa Salute News – 17/08/2010 
Editor's note: "Lemon Market": "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" is a 1970 article written by American economist George Akerlof. In his contribution, the author exemplifies the conditions of information asymmetry in the market, especially when the seller has a greater amount of information on the property offered to the buyer. Akerlof exemplifies the consequences of information asymmetry with the case of the used car market where the person interested in buying knows nothing in advance, neither if the car is good, nor if the car is a bin. Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 for their research on information asymmetry. The consequence of the mechanism described in the article is that the markets, in situations where quality is an uncertain fact, definitively cease to exist. [from WikipediaA]
