Thanks to a research-intensive (and, therefore, capital-intensive) pharmaceutical industry, pharmacy shelves now contain dozens of antibiotics and blood pressure medications. Similar treatments are available as well for other medical problems, such as arthritis, hypertension, abnormal lipids, and heart failure, and new vaccines have virtually eradicated many dreaded childhood illnesses. Moreover, greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms of disease has provided the wherewithal to make these drugs far safer and more effective.
These stunning successes notwithstanding, the pharmaceutical industry has become a lightning rod for critics. In her new book, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, Marcia Angell, Harvard Medical School lecturer and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, blasts the drug industry, accusing it of profiteering, having become “a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit,” and using “its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.”
Dr. Angell maintains that the pharmaceutical industry’s reputation for innovation is a myth, that in fact it “feeds off the NIH” and that new drugs “nearly always stem from publicly supported research.” She makes much of the fact that the drug industry, “corrupted by easy profits and greed,” has high marketing and administrative costs, and blames the companies for the paucity of genuinely innovative and affordable new drugs.
Many of these accusations are questionable; some are patently unfair or untrue.
In 1999, the NIH thoroughly investigated whether its research funding commonly leads to the development of pharmaceuticals, the profits from which taxpayers might be entitled to share. Of 47 drugs that had earned revenues of $500 million or more, NIH support had figured significantly in only four, two of which were actually the same drug. The NIH supports primarily pre-commercial, fundamental research into the biochemistry, physiology and molecular biology of cells and organisms, in health and disease.
Read the entire article. Then think carefully about the unintended consequences of over regulating the pharmaceutical industry.
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5 Responses to More on Marcia Angell’s book
Graham
September 13th, 2004 at 4:49 pm
And then there’s an unpublished NIH study from 2000 saying that NIH money was important in many drugs, so go figure.
The $800m line is absolutely bogus as well, and I’m sure Dr. Miller knows it, too. He completely ignores a good 50% of the book in his criticism… read it first and then decide. It’s a very fast read.
I posted my own review last night.
Machi
September 14th, 2004 at 8:32 am
Read the entire article. Then think carefully about the consequences of the PHARMA ad on Dr. Miller’s biography page.
Then go read Dr. Angell’s book. Here’s another interview with her:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/health/policy/14conv.html
Machi
September 14th, 2004 at 8:35 am
By the way, Graham’s review is very good.
swift
September 14th, 2004 at 5:06 pm
All the drug company apologists must be on vacation.
In that Times interview, Angell gives an assessment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit: “…the main Medicare drug benefit that goes into effect in 2006 is designed to funnel billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry. It’s an absolute bonanza for it. The pharmaceutical industry’s lobbyists made certain that the legislation contained a provision barring Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Interestingly, the federal government negotiates drug prices for the Veterans Affairs system and gets very low prices because it is a bulk purchaser. And Medicare would have been the biggest bulk purchaser of all – so it could have negotiated very low prices. That provision allows the drug companies to continue raising their prices faster than the inflation rate, and the drug benefit will soon become unaffordable.”
Would allowing Medicare to negotiate drug pricing have been an example of “over regualting the pharmaceutical industry”?
swift
September 14th, 2004 at 5:07 pm
Bear in mind, however, I’m still a fan of your single pricing idea. But I doubt that we’ll ever see such a scenario in the real world.