Re: [N] Drug Makers: Part One

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/08/2004 10:51:27 Central Standard Time,

Debbie.Borders@... writes:

I am posting this which was on a nurse list I am on but thought you guys

might be interested....................Cary

> I do not have the link that this came from and due to the length will send

> it in two parts

>

> She Turns Her Pen on Drug Makers

> Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell criticizes

> costs, research and marketing. By Jaret Special to The Times

> August 9, 2004

>

> For more than a decade, physician Marcia Angell served as executive editor

> and then editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the

> country's most prestigious medical journals. Under her watch, the journal

> published hundreds of studies of new drugs. It also published blunt

> editorials harshly critical of the pharmaceutical industry and the way drugs

> are tested and approved in the United States.

>

> Angell left the journal's editorship in 2000, and is now a senior lecturer

> at Harvard Medical School. She has written a scathing critique of the

> pharmaceutical industry, " The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They

> Deceive Us and What to Do About It " (Random House, 2004). In a recent

> conversation, she talked about why so many of the drugs on the market are so

> costly, and also about her contention that many of them are not as effective

> as they're promoted to be.

>

> Question: We all know drugs are expensive. But doesn't that reflect the high

> cost of researching and developing new drugs?

>

> Answer: No. That's what the drug makers would like you to think. But it's

> simply not true. In 2002, the biggest drug companies spent only about 14% of

> sales on research and development and 31% on what most of them call

> marketing and administration. They consistently make more in profits than

> they spend in R & D. And their profits are immense. In 2002, the combined

> profits of the 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 were $35.9 billion.

> That's more than the profits for all the other 490 business put together, if

> you subtract losses from gains.

>

> Q: The system may be flawed, but hasn't it generated hundreds of new

> medications?

>

> A: That's another myth the drug makers would like you to believe. In fact,

> the number of truly innovative new drugs is quite small. True, many drugs

> are coming to market. But most of them aren't new at all. They are minor

> variations of bestselling drugs that are already on the market.