But What Have They Done Lately?

[Guest guest]

But What Have They Done Lately?

July 7, 2008; Page A12

Wall Street Journal*

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121539733302831535.html?

mod=googlenews_wsj

Zycher's " Drug Development Needs Private Industry " (op-ed,

June 28) aims to refute my statement, which he accurately

quotes, " The drug companies do almost no innovation now [italics

added]. " But the examples of innovation he cites date back to the

1980s or earlier. Moreover, he doesn't tell the whole story even

about these older drugs. For example, Amgen did not work out the

synthesis of Epogen on its own; it licensed the basic technique from

Columbia University. Nearly every top-selling drug today has

progenitors dating back many years, often based on NIH-funded

research in universities.

Even Mr. Zycher found that of the 35 drugs he reviewed, " private-

sector research was responsible for central advances in basic

science for seven. " That's not much of a yield. (Mr. Zycher should

have mentioned that the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug

Development, with which he collaborated, is largely supported by the

pharmaceutical industry.) Far from doing scientific innovation, the

large drug companies license or otherwise acquire discoveries from

universities or small biotech companies, then develop them for

commercial production and sponsor the clinical research necessary

for FDA approval. That's expensive, but hardly creative in the

scientific sense. As one senior executive told Journal reporter

Gautam Naik (Feb. 13, 2002), " We're not going to put our money in-

house if there's a better investment vehicle outside. "

The problem with this sequence -- publicly-funded innovation handed

off to the drug companies -- is that the industry expects to be

rewarded as though it were the source of innovation, pricing drugs

as high as the traffic will bear and doing everything possible to

extend its exclusive marketing rights. The only really innovative

thing about this industry today is the claims of its apologists.

Marcia Angell, M.D.

Harvard Medical School

Cambridge, Mass.