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The Disability Grapevine Online Newspaper: Issue #31
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Year 5
http://www.disabilitygrapevine.com
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Title of Article:
Truth About Drug Companies
Author:
Submitted By:
Roy Bercaw, Editor
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Article:
Below is the URL and the first paragraph from a lengthy article about
the
pharmaceutical industry by an author of a forthcoming book.
Some of the more provocative statements verify my previous comments on that
industry and its influence on the medical profession and academic
researchers. The only powerful lobby omitted in this article is the human
services industry.
>From the article:
" ... drug companies are now blanketing us with public relations
messages."
" ... only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to
market
in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer funded research at
academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National
Institutes
of Health (NIH)."
" ... estimated total worldwide sales for perscription drugs [are] about
$400 billion in 2002."
"... when a patent held by a university or a small biotech company is
eventually licensed to a big drug company, all parties cash in on the
public investment in research."
" ... nonprofit institutions started to see themselves as 'partners' of
industry, ... Faculty researchers were encouraged to obtain patents on their
work (which were assigned to their universities), and they shared in the
royalties."
"One of the results has been a growing pro-industry bias in medical
research--exactly where such bias does not belong."
"Drug companies now employ small armies of lawyers to milk these laws
[Bayh-Dole, and Hatch-Waxman] for all they're worth --and they're worth a
lot."
"For example, if it did not like something about the FDA, the federal
agency that is supposed to regulate the industry, it could change it
through its
friends in Congress."
"It is difficult to conceive of how awash in money big pharma is."
Big pharma "is a vast marketing machine. Instead of being a free market
success story, it lives off government-funded research and monopoly rights."
Drug companies have the largest lobby in Washington, and they give
copiously to political campaigns."
Roy Bercaw
The New York Review of Books
July 15, 2004
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244?email
The Truth About the Drug Companies
By Marcia Angell
Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the
pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular
drug--usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the
great outdoors--is a more general message. Boiled down to its
essentials, it is this: 'Yes, prescription drugs are expensive, but
that shows how valuable they are. Besides, our research and
development costs are enormous, and we need to cover them somehow. As
'research-based' companies, we turn out a steady stream of innovative
medicines that lengthen life, enhance its quality, and avert more
expensive medical care. You are the beneficiaries of this ongoing
achievement of the American free enterprise system, so be grateful,
quit whining, and pay up.' More prosaically, what the industry is
saying is that you get what you pay for.
--
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