E-DRUG: non-commercial diseases/neglected diseases (3)
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"Clinical trials -once led by academic medical centers- aim to provide
physicians with new diagnostic and therapeutic tools for the
management of their patients. As more and more funding for clinical research
has come from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, that
leadership role has changed. At the same time there are concerns that rather
market mechanisms like purchasing power and market size as opposed to
patient needs are dictating priorities in drug research. The public sector
has insufficiently fulfilled its regulating role in this matter."
I agree to this. Unfortunately governments put less money in
research and many medical charities, the other source of
independent research, are in severe financial difficulties.
However, until tax payers in industrialized countries are not
prepared to pay more for public services, which include academic
research, the role of drug companies will do nothing but increase.
Many people in the public at large can't see that independently
sponsored clinical research will lead to health improvements for
all.
However, a huge amount of publicly funded research has been
going on for years in Oxford, Cambridge and many other leading
world Universities. A lot of this research has been done at ground
level as well (the Gambia for instance, Wellcome Trust
sponsored) . The worldwide collaborative academic research has
included the decoding of the plasmodium falciparum genome and
the continuous search for a malaria vaccine at biological and
clinical trial level.
At Oxford University clinical trials on a malaria vaccine and an
AIDS vaccine are ongoing. These are obviously publicly
sponsored, mainly by the UK Medical Research Council, the
Wellcome Trust and also by other small charities.
Unfortunately both the malaria and the AIDS vaccine pose
enormous scientific problems. There is a big amount of literature
in this area. Anyone who is interested can search the Internet,
especially Pubmed, the free -all encompassing- medical
electronic library. Abstracts are available free for all, some journals
provide free access to full text for people in any country, others only
to low income countries ( a list of these was published in NEJM
and certainly is available through WHO). Unfortunately central and
south American countries are excluded, unless things have
changed but I doubt.
At any rate, this message is to say that by no means hope is lost
and the industrialized world is responding- and has done so for
decades-to the major killers in in the rest of the world.
Please remember that the AIDS virus was characterized and its
genome decoded by Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in
Paris and by Robert Gallo at the NIH in 1983. I can't find any more
publicly funded research than this.
Valeria
Dr Valeria Frighi
Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism
Churchill Hospital
Oxford
OX3 7LJ
UK
Tel # 44 1865 857300
Fax # 44 1865 857636
valeria.frighi@doctors.org.uk
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