Big Pharma Spends More On Advertising Than Research

January 15, 2008

January 8th, 2008

A drug company is a commercial business whose focus is to research,

develop, market and/or distribute drugs, most commonly in the context

of healthcare; from wikipedia. But according to a study by two York

University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry

spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and

development, contrary to the industry's claim.

But how could this be you might ask yourself. Well the answer is

fairly easy; regardless of its purpose of helping people it is a

bussiness and thus it has to make money and the way of making money is

by advertising more and researching less. The researchers' estimate is

based on the systematic collection of data directly from the industry

and doctors during 2004, which shows the U.S. pharmaceutical industry

spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for

research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of

US$235.4 billion.

In case you are wondering who made this study well the research is

co-authored by PhD candidate Marc-André Gagnon, who led the study and

Lexchin, a long-time researcher of pharmaceutical promotion,

Toronto physician, and Associate Chair of York's School of Health

Policy & Management in the Faculty of Health.

" In our paper, we make the case for the need for a new estimate of

promotional expenditures by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, " says

Gagnon. " We then explain how we used proprietary databases to

construct a revised estimate and finally, we compare our results with

those from other data sources to argue in favor of changing the

priorities of the industry. "

This study is very important as it shows the most accurate image yet

of the promotional workings of the pharmaceutical industry, says

Lexchin. But even this could be wrong a bit because there are other

advertising campaigns which could not be taken into consideration such

as ghost-writing and off-label promotion so in fact these companies

are probably spending more than twice advertising rather then

researching. As well, note the authors, the number of meetings for

promotional purposes has dramatically increased in the U.S.

pharmaceutical industry, jumping from 120,000 in 1998 to 371,000 in

2004, further supporting their findings that the U.S. pharmaceutical

industry is marketing-driven.

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