What am I getting myself into

One very common point of contention within the life sciences is whether or not we are “evil” people.  Are we simply motivated by the large profit potential and insatiable demand?  Or is our work all in the name of progressing the health of humanity, with the payout just a side benefit?  As a student paying good money to specialize in the business of the industry, it’s one of those things that you pretty much have to figure out on your own.

On one side, sure, everyone’s got to make a living somehow, but how equitable is it when your wealth is proportional to how much someone doesn’t want to feel pain, or even die?  How humanitarian is it when the a company’s worst fear is the loss of monopoly-granting patent protection and the rapid onset of generic competition?

But on the other, what would life be like without pharmaceutical companies?  How much progression in health would there be without basic forms of medicine?  There is no doubt we are curing diseases, reducing pain, and extending the human lifespan.  Life science companies are R&D machines that filter, select, produce, and distribute drugs for us so we can walk two miles to the supermarket and buy some wonder-drug so we can get back to our semi-normal lives.  That whole process is expensive and risky, and the protections afforded to the industry are undeniably what keeps it going.

This argument will undoubtedly revisit itself to this blog time and time again as it’s something I’m still trying to wrap my head around, but I leave you with a few facts that I’ve picked up over the past few weeks:

• Worldwide drug sales in 2005 reached $602 billion
• The top 10 drug companies scored $36 billion in profit in 2005, that’s 18% of sales
• In the past 6 years, only 43/603 drugs were considered “significant improvements”
• In the past 6 years, only 6 drugs were released that offered “new benefits”
• The “overall” cost of producing a successful drug is approximately $1.2 billion
• Approximately 80% of new drug candidates come from government funded academic research labs
• PhRMA is the largest government lobby in existence
• The FDA has been known to be underpowered and understaffed for more than than 15 years
• The US Patent office offers 20 years of marketing exclusivity

But:

• US Generic prices are the lowest in the world
• Patients pay more out of pocket than physicians or hospitals
• Only ~1/10,000 drug candidates actually make it
• Unlike the consumers, physicians and insurers feel the prices are reasonable
• Academia receives large royalties for licensed products
• Government regulatory compliance is extremely expensive
• It is illegal to not to make the maximum profit allowable by law

~ by bioscigrad on March 28, 2008.