In general, drug companies are reasonably good at developing new treatments, and there's also a lot of good in the industry.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Pharmaceutical companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new HIV/AIDS treatments not out of altruism but because they can make up those research costs in sales.
The United States has an active pharmaceutical industry that has brought huge benefits to the U.S. public. Most Americans, who benefit from these advances, have little understanding of how difficult it is to create an important new medical therapy and make it available to improve public health.
I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.
The pharmaceutical industry isn't the only place where there's waste and inefficiency and profiteering. That happens in much of the rest of the health care industry.
Getting a traditional pharmaceutical to the market can cost a billion dollars or more. Newer, more tailored and targeted drugs called biologics are even more complex and expensive. Simple economics dictates that companies and venture funds will invest more in products that can generate a sufficient return.
The pharmaceutical industry likes to depict itself as a research-based industry, as the source of innovative drugs. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is their incredible PR and their nerve.
Fundamental discoveries can and should be made in industry or academies, but to carry that knowledge forward and to develop a new drug to the market has to depend on the resources of industry.
The pharma industry is one of the few industries that comes up every year and brags about how much worse they got - like, now it costs $2 billion to make a drug, and it was a billion 5 years ago.
Biomedical research is only as good as its delivery. Distribution of medicines by charities is no more than a stopgap.
It is very clear that the present system of innovation for medicines is very inefficient and really somewhat corrupt. It benefits shareholders over patients; it produces for the rich markets and not for the poor and does not produce for minority diseases.