Word: drugging
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...bottom line isn't the only culprit. It does take on average more than 13 years and often several hundred million dollars for a company to research and test a major new drug before it's presented to the FDA for approval. Only about one of every 10,000 chemical compounds that are first tested end up as medicine cleared by the feds. Converting basic scientific research into effective medicines to treat complex diseases like cancer has also become more difficult the past several years with more expensive and longer drug trials, as well as higher failure rates. There...
...congressional watchdog agency's 48-page study came up with disturbing numbers. From 1993-2004, spending by U.S. drug companies on research and development jumped 147%, from $16 billion to nearly $40 billion annually. But the number of applications the pharmaceutical firms submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for potentially groundbreaking new drugs during that 10-year period increased only a meager 7%. And since 1995, the applications for these innovative drugs have been dropping each year. "The productivity of research and development investments has declined," the GAO concluded...
...shrinking pipeline comes at a time when basic science is bursting with new breakthroughs in fields like human genome decoding, which in turn have raised hopes for breakthrough cures and treatments of serious illnesses. But the numbers show otherwise. The GAO reviewed all 1,264 of the new drug applications submitted for FDA approval from 1993-2004 and found that 60% of them were actually for what industry analysts call "me too" drugs-variations of medications already out on the market. Only 12% of the applications were for what the FDA classified as "priority" new drugs-that is, medications with...
...three Democrats who asked for the GAO study-Rep. Henry Waxman, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. Richard Durbin-pounced on its findings as proof once more that corporate greed in health care is shortchanging consumers. "The report shows that much drug industry research doesn't translate into real breakthroughs for patients," says Kennedy. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents the drug industry, fired back that the GAO report only confirms that developing new drugs has become a more expensive, difficult and risky exercise for manufacturers. "Researchers are tackling increasingly complex diseases using new tools-such as genomics...
...business interests have actually been a factor in curbing innovations, the GAO found. During the past decade the pharmaceutical industry has tended to focus on "blockbuster drugs" for large patient populations that can generate as much as $1 billion in annual sales, while ignoring "other drugs for more limited populations that generate much less revenue." Manufacturers find "me too" drug development less risky and more potentially lucrative than research into brand-new medications. Drug company mergers in the early 1990s also have resulted in the larger firms' scaling back R&D into new drugs as they look to cut costs...