Let me try again. Government agencies only approve drugs that have been proven (to their very high standards) to be acceptably safe, efficient and cost effective. In order to meet these criteria, drug companies have to first of all come up with an idea (expensive), test that idea in animal research (expensive), conduct safety trials (expensive), conduct dose response trials (expensive), conduct efficacy trials versus a placebo (expensive), conduct comparison trials versus existing drugs (expensive) and prepare their bid for approval (expensive). If they get the drug approved, they still have to gather data on its use (expensive) and they have to repeat the approval process all over the world, conducting whatever additional analyses and studies are demanded by the government agencies (expensive). They then have to manufacture that drug, with all the normal costs that entails. This whole process costs hundreds of millions of pounds. Per new drug. (I am not exaggerating.) To encourage companies to do research, they are allowed patents. These patents give them the right to be the only manufacturer of the drug for a fixed time. This right begins the moment the patent is applied for. That means that a long development and approval process eats into the time with which a company can recoup its costs and make some return on these. It can take decades to get a drug from concept to market. (I am not exaggerating.) It is not uncommon for a company to have less than ten years left on a patent when a drug finally gets approved. And most never even get to approval. We are talking less than one percent actually making it. But they still incurred millions in costs. These are the main reasons that drugs are expensive. Not money grabbing or profiteering, but making a reasonable return from unreasonable costs.
Think I may grasp the costingd now never really thought of all that!..probably a bit ignorant on my part lack of facts!..but on the up side we are all so lucky here in the uk we have an NHS as there would be a lot of us out there not being able to afford testing and treatments!..
Hello,
Everything medical today seems to be profit driven.
But i do see what you are pointing towards, it must be cheaper to keep us out of hospital in the long run. For a £1000 a night i would want better care than my last stay in hospital. But thats being pickey
Darren
It seems to me it does not matter if pharma is behaving ethically or not. The fact is that even if you think the licenced drugs are effective they are so expensive that they are being rationed.
This is true across a range of diseases.
The costs are unattainable so ultimately the system has to change.
Well said, Rizzo. Like it or not, a cut-throat competitive pharma industry, for all its less appealing characteristics, is WAY more likely to produce big break-through advances than any imaginable centrally-planned, publically funded alternative with a Five Year Plan and no share price to worry about. That didn’t work for Stalin, and it wouldn’t work for pharma.
Darned right that Governments who end up paying for these drugs need to keep a shrewd and watchful eye on the pharma companies to keep them honest, but it is just plain daft to act as if they are the enemy. I’m grateful to them, that’s for sure, as are many of us who started our MS lives just as the first wave of really good drugs started coming in. It is hard to believe how recently there was really nothing for RRMS. There still isn’t much in the locker for progressive MS - I only hope those days are soon in the past, and it will be Big Pharma that makes the leap when it comes, so the best of luck to them, I say.
Alison
You are right Fudgey. It’s a debate that could go on forever. It is just a matter of oppinion. As with everything , some people think that it’s a good thing and some people think that it’s not. We’re all entitled to our oppinion and we are all entitled to express that oppinion and this forum is a medium through which we can do this. For which, I for one am very grateful.
Hello,
BG-12 a (hopefully) pill form of dmd, is getting thru all the testing in US and EU. But the companys are panicking that their injectables won’t be so popular. So some are trying to block it.
Are they money grabbing you know whats? More than likley imo. But wanting to help people doesn’t pay the bills. Its a shame but it something many of us are passionate about.
Darren
That’s nice of them Darren. Yes, hoorah for the pharmaceutical companies. They are just so full of love and compassion but hey, as long as they have healthy profit margins eh?
Am on your side, not just from a nursing point or the fact that my SO is one of these who are doing research! (not MS related but on other illnesses) But just like they have to keep experimenting and trialling etc. My SO had a brilliant breakdown from one company of where the money goes in one of these firms (think it was a branch of Glaxosmithkline)
Fact 1: Sky make 50% more return on capital than Glaxo.
Fact 2: Glaxo make more money from their consumer products (things like Ribena and Lucozade) than they do from their drugs.
But hey!, we’d all rather have football on TV and kid’s drinks in the fridge than vaccines for cervical cancer so that’s OK??
PS VinceA: would love to see those figures sometime - I’m sure they would be really interesting.
Hello,
Say’s it all Glaxo making products bad for health and drugs to help health.
On another note glaxo maybe tax avoiders?:
But without companys like this we would have no chance to find cures, vaccines, etc
Darren