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To: elmatador who wrote (66534)	7/23/2005 1:43:38 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi El Matador - I've seen the document you are quoting from,and it has a fair number of distortions -enough to undermine much of its' argument. Let's take this one - "many of the basic discoveries that drug companies develop and profit from came from universities and government institutes in the first place." On first reading, you would think the government guys discovered the drug mechanism, and which class of compounds would work, and all the pharma companies did was figure out how make more of it and put it stuff in a shinny red pill. (Oh, much of the university research is sponsored and paid of by drug companies) The basice research usually finds a disease pathway that is like a this - A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> G Where A is a slightly abnormal condition -say overweight and G is a bad thing - say high blood pressure. ********* So the drug companies try to find something which will then effectively (meaning very low dose) interrupt this chain which does not have side effects, can be made in quantitiy, stay in the body for a few hours but not a few days, doesn't breakdown to toxic stuff, etc. ************************ The "me-too" drugs are often successful because the do the same thing, only with fewer side effects, or fewer side effects for certain groups of patients. Like producing less nausea, or not lowering blood pressure, or being much easier on the kidneys or liver. Important if you want to keep living, or avoid hospitalization while you are on the drug. As a minor example, there are about 6 differnt popular BZD tranquilizera (benxodiazepam) that are like Valium. They have different half-lifes in the body. Some, like Ambien, act fast and are metabolized fast. This makes it useful as a sleeping pill, so when you wake up, you are not drowsy. Some, like Cloznepan (Kolonopin) have 12 + hour half life, and leave the body slowly. This avoids the "anxiety-rebond" effect that happens with faster drugs. **** With drug development cost sky-high, actual "me-too" drugs with NO real advantages rarely get funded. Sometimes the improved performance isn't as good, or better drugs come along. This "me-too" argument tends to gain more traction with politicians than with practicing doctors. See if an infectious disease specialist agrees to using only ten different antibiotics...;-) ############ Promotion costs - Revenue is usually some ratio to promotion cost. So if a movie costs 80 million, it is reasonable to spend 100 million promoting it to get 300 million back. The cereal box often costs more than the acutal costs of cereal. >>Politicians like to attack promotion costs because all those advertising dollars do tend to help the media see the drug companies side of the issue ;-)