Duh Real Truth About Drug Companies

According to a new report from the Manhattan Institute, the vast majority of drug development takes place within the private sector and not, as some claim, in government-funded laboratories.

I know, duh – but it’s important to keep hammering home this point.

Based on the case histories of 35 widely prescribed drugs, researchers from the Manhattan Institute and Tufts University determined that almost all of the medicines they analyzed would not have been developed without private sector research.. And in 28 cases they found that private sector research led to improvements in a drug's clinical performance or to a better way to manufacture the drug. Discovery is cool. And so is development. One without the other leads nowhere.

According to an article in today’s edition of the New York Sun, “Dollar by dollar, the pharmaceutical industry outspends the government in drug development. According to the industry's main lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, it costs $1.3 million to develop a new drug. In 2007, the group's members spent $44.5 billion on research and development of prescription drugs, while the industry overall spent $58.8 billion. The same year, the National Institutes of Health allocated $28.6 billion in grants, some of which went to developing new drugs.”

I know, duh – but these are important facts to keep repeating and repeating in the appropriate context. Because there are those who chose to manipulate the facts to tell their own version of the truth.

And the NewSpeaker-in-Chief is Dr. Marcia Angell. According to her 2004 book “The Truth About the Drug Companies,”

"… drug companies no longer have to rely on their own research for new drugs … they rely on academia, small biotech startup companies, and the NIH for that."

Our friend Ben Zycher, one of the Manhattan Institute authors said Dr. Angell's argument is a "curious" one.

"If they don't come up with scientific innovation, what are they spending all this research and development money on?" he said, referring to pharmaceutical companies.

Well, duh.

Here’s a link to the complete article in the NY Sun:

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/capitalism-said-key-to-finding-new-drugs/80569/

Here’s how the article ends:

A former associate commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Peter Pitts, said it would be hard to say which sector's work was more important. “A discovery is a discovery," Mr. Pitts, who now serves as president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, said. "I think the most important thing to understand is that a lot of people think the government discovers drugs and the industry sells them, and that's not true," he said. "But industry and government need to work together to make sure drugs get to the public in a safe way," he said.

Well, duh!