Posted by madeline on February 18, 2007, at 11:51:06
In reply to Why Most New Antidepressants Are Ineffective, posted by bulldog2 on February 17, 2007, at 13:07:07
That big pharma has with intention misled the public, the medical community and all of the regulatory agencies.
Let's also assume that these new drugs are actually awful and any efficacy that has been noted has been disproportionally reported.
I would even go so far as to say, as the author quoted, that the for profit venture of making medicine has fueled every bit of this deceit. That a mere 10% of the operating budget devoted to R&D is a mere pittance of what it should be in these companies.
All that being true what, exactly, are we prepared to do about it?
10% R&D of the operating budget from big pharma is probably more than 1000X money than the best NIH funded laboratory in the US gets from the gov't.
If you combined all of the R&D budgets from big pharma it is probably more than the ENTIRE NIH budget, and the NIH funds everything from basic research on up and not just drug discovery.
If you took the for profits out of the game entirely, then you wouldn't have anything at all.
So regulate them? They already are. Expose them? Keep going. Demand better drugs and reporting? Absolutely, the market drives the product.
But nothing is going to change until people start putting their money where their mouth is.
poster:madeline
thread:733613
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070213/msgs/733821.html