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Speaking of Dinosaurs ...
I've long thought that Big Pharma was in deep doggy doo-doo. (Long before Vioxx-Bextra-Nexium.) Their inability to find blockbusters, for whatever reasons and despite gargantuan R&D appetites, has been near the top of my watch-worry list. On the other hand, I've long defended their profitability as the necessary price of drug discovery. Until now.
Or, rather, until I dove into Dr Marcia Angell's The Truth About the Drug Companies. (It is an exposé, but she's no Michael Moore. Dr Angell was longtime Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and one of Time's 25 "most influential people in America.) I will not précis the book here, but simply point out one troublesome passage on industry innovativeness which body-slammed me: "In the five years 1998 through 2002, 415 new drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of which only 14 percent were truly innovative. A further 9 percent were old drugs that had been changed in some way that made them, in the FDA's view, significant improvements. And the remaining 77 percent? Incredibly, they were all me-too drugs—classified by the agency as being no better than drugs already on the market to treat the same condition. Some of these had different chemical compositions from the originals; most did not. But none were considered improvements." Whoops!
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Comments
Hmmm ............. maybe it is fellow Boomers and the drug-culture 1960's expansion of such that now has us worship at the false alter of creating and "taking drugs"???!!!
Treat a symptom and not the cause MD/Pharma partnership$$$!!!??? And I'm one of them with the diet iced tea Snapplesque craving I have right now!!!
Posted by Freeman at November 18, 2004 1:33 PM
Freeman, not Diet PEACH Snapple, by any chance?
Posted by tom peters at November 18, 2004 1:36 PM
Yes - Diet PEACH is my current favorite!
Posted by Freeman at November 18, 2004 1:51 PM
I've been reading the new Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan book, "Confronting Reality", and they are not fans of pharma either. One thing they point out--and sorry, I don't have the book with me right not--is that the easier advancements/innovations have already been made. In other words, all of the lower-hanging fruit has been harvested. New, really innovative drugs will be far more difficult to develop, and that would explain the dearth of innovative new products.
Posted by Doug Smith at November 18, 2004 3:08 PM
Malcolm Gladwell had an interesting take on this book in the New Yorker. Worth reading:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?041025crat_atlarge
Posted by Hal at November 18, 2004 3:09 PM
Big Pharma is going to face a difficult future. Eventually, the health care crisis will reach a point where we take a cold hard look at our health care processes and figure out that preventive measures offer much more value than heroic treatment.
When this realization trickles down through the system much of Big Pharma will become irrelevant.
Posted by John D at November 19, 2004 12:38 PM
Many thanks to Hal for his link to the Gladwell article, which I read over coffee this morning. Anyone concerned by the rising cost of health care--and isn't that all of us?--will want to read it. And anyone who has read Dr. Angell's book needs to read it.
Posted by Doug Smith at November 19, 2004 2:08 PM
Freeman, as a "fellow Boomer" and card-carrying abuser of the "drug-culture" in the 60s (I played rock & roll for a living then, so it was an occupational necessity), I find that many of my old comrades eschew the over-the-counter culture and avoid pharmaceuticals altogether now - legal and illegal. I've managed to avoid all drugs - and conventional medical treatments - for the last 20 years and am meeting more refugees from the 60s who are doing likewise. (As Hippocrates said, "Let food be thy medicine.") This may be an interesting subcultural phenomenon that's taking place beneath the radar - though certainly not a threat to Big Pharma.
Posted by John O'Leary at November 19, 2004 2:55 PM
John - thanks for the comment - I'm there too re: wellness - hopefully we can form a healthcare pool so we aren't sharing pool costs of obese/smoking/toking abusers any longer!!!
Posted by Freeman at November 22, 2004 6:52 AM
TP ...
Ask around about DeCode genetics, in Iceland ... what their up to ,with time, should be cause for some serious jaw-dropping around the world.
Posted by thomas at March 6, 2005 4:36 AM