Dr Allen Frances has a new book out, titled
Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0062229257
interviewed on Lateline:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3763502.htm
Drug companies aren't making all that much money. The world's largest drug company, Pfizer, is taking a beating and shutting down factories to cut costs.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that making new drugs is ludicrously expensive. It may be true that a $300 bottle of pills has only $12 worth of chemicals in it, but behind that bottle is millions spent on researching, developing and testing the drug, and the bills from countless drugs that never made it to market despite all that money that was poured in (because only at the end did they turn out to be unsafe or ineffective, etc). Then they have to get everything they make through the FDA, market it and get doctors on board prescribing it to patients, and after all that there is still the potential for massive financial failure once their patents are up and anybody can make a generic.
If the end product of all that process is countless drugs that are later withdrawn from sale due to being found to be unsafe and/or ineffective, then I still don't think much of the business. I could give you a list a mile long of drugs that have been withdrawn after countless patients have been discovered in studies to have caused more harm than good. If drugs were indisputably safe and effective upon release for sale by the pharma companies, there would presumably be no need for further research, but it is done. Did you ever read "Bad Pharma" by Dr Ben Goldacre?
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