Re: Does Pharma want to hook you for life on a CLL drug?

[Guest guest]

Hi, Agree that profit incentives drive innovation. So a competing company

will of course drive innovation - improvements, because the 20K tire will

outsell the 10K product and so on.

.... But in that model you don't typically get more fatalities for the extra

miles, as you sometimes have to exchange for better drugs.

The government role in drug development is to make sure the claim is true - and

the tradeoffs are reasonable.

The government also has a big role in developing the technologies, which are

then licensed to commercial entities - bexxar among them.

http://ttc.nci.nih.gov/mission/success.php

Troubling to me, although I don't know how common it is - sometimes a company

has a competing interest - owns two drugs and could well advance the better

selling one, over the better one, or will hold off on developing the better one

until the patent expires on the first.

The most profitable company could also dominate what is studies, making it hard

for smaller entities to evaluate their products.

So I don't think the free market system is perfect, or that it would have any

value if there were no government regulations and standards for approvals to

protect the public interest - including a level playing field for competition.

Karl