[e-drug] Pharmaceutical R&D: high prices but few new benefits

e-drug
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E-DRUG: Pharmaceutical R&D: high prices but few new benefits
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Dear Colleagues,

I thought you would be interested in a new, short article in the BMJ August 8th on-line and in print on the 11th by Joel Lexchin at York and me. It shows how most new drug expenditures go to minor variations that are under-tested for harmful side effects. Free access is available at:

http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.e4348?ijkey=Y1g4ZVUImIbtXOI&keytype=ref

Then click on "PDF"

My previous study (THE RISKS OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS Columbia University Press 2010) showed we have an epidemic of illness, injury, hospitalizations and death from prescription drugs, about 50 million harmful side effects a year in a population of 170 million taking drugs.

Estimates rank prescription drugs as the 4th leading cause of death in the United States.

The article shows that the widely promoted and believed innovation crisis in drug research is a myth: the rate of new molecules has come down from an artificial spike to its long-term average or above.

The real innovation crisis consists of so many new drugs having few or no clinical advantages over existing drugs, which the industry never discusses. Yet the scores of minor variations are the primary products of pharmaceutical R&D.

Driving this pattern, Joel Lexchin and I speculate, is a hidden business model of smaller, steady profits from scores of minor variations that provide a soft landing when companies fall off the "patent cliff" as major patents expire. This is also probably why pharmaceutical companies are so opposed to comparative effectiveness research, even though they are happy to claim their new drugs are "better."

Next year I will be at Harvard University as a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, doing more related studies.

Thanks,

Don

PS - Readers and you can go to WWW/PHARMAMYTHS.NET for other, related articles and my book.

Donald W. Light
Cell: +1-609-216-0071
Professor, UDMNJ-SOM
Visiting Researcher, Center for Migration & Development, Princeton University
Network Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Senior Fellow, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
dlight@Princeton.EDU

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E-DRUG: Pharmaceutical R&D: high prices but few new benefits (2)
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A better link might be: Summary and access to Light & Lexchin article in Aug BMJ on high prices and poor value in prescription drugs:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillypharma/Researchers-say-pharmaceutical-innovation-crisis-is-a-myth.html

regards

Donald W. Light
Cell: +1=609-216-0071
Professor, UDMNJ-SOM
Visiting Researcher, Center for Migration & Development, Princeton University
Network Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Senior Fellow, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania