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Biotech / Medical : Biotech News -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (138)	7/4/2000 1:44:55 PM
From: scott_jiminez	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7143

'On the one hand we are demanding new and better drugs (cure for diseases), but when it comes to cost issue we are not willing to pay price.' This is a subjective statement. We are indeed 'willing' and, in fact, compelled to pay the price in incredibly expensive drugs. If we were 'unwilling' to pay the price then why would this be on the national agenda in the first place? It is precisely because we are forced to 'pay the price' that the topic is current. It is just as naive and preposterous to trust statements from the industry regarding their justification of their pricing structure as it is to trust government to insert its leverage in trying to control the cost of medication. The industry has everything to gain by claiming huge development costs...but where is the person in the back of the room whispering, 'Humm, I wonder if they could prove that?' That's why the NYT article was so critical: it took the industry at its word and found their numbers and perceptions grossly exaggerated. A non-insignificant fraction of the time and expense cited by pharmas for drug development occurred, to repeat, in academia, under public funding. And if you believe for a moment that these academic institutions receive proportional compensation for their efforts if a drug is successful, then my 'overblown' statement pales in comparison to such innocence. Do we simply let the industry claim XYZ regarding development costs and, like humble servants, pay the price? Who or what should be the regulatory force examining pharmas to see if their claims are even close to being realistic? Can you provide SI with other objective analyses of the cost claims by the pharmas (objective = analysis NOT NOT NOT sponsored by industry). We should certainly not let investors - whose concern for return on equity outstrips the moral and ethical concerns that government is forced to face - determine the pricing structure of medication. Bureaucrats may tend to average; executives tend to press greed to its logical extreme. Both are deleterious to the maintenance of a dynamic environment for drug discovery. Should we argue against blind imposition of ignorant government intrusion into the drug development process? Indeed. Should we argue against blind reliance upon the industry to provide an accurate representation of their cost basis for drug pricing? Indeed. I don't trust the capacity of government to efficiently oversee the pharmaceutical industry any more than you do. However my trust is even less for the industry to police itself.