Developing Drugs According to Profitability

First posted: 10/26/2005
Worth a repeat posting.

'Thirty years ago, the retiring head of the Merck pharmaceutical company (Henry Gadsden) told Fortune magazine that he was distressed that the market for his company’s drugs was limited to only sick people. If he could make drugs for healthy people, he would be able to “sell to everyone”. That dream is now coming true.'
-Excerpt from Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients-by Ray Moynihan and Allen Cassels

One would need live in a hole in the ground, on some far distant planet, to not realize what has transpired in this country, concerning prescription drugs, and their permeation of our society. Over half of Americans today, are taking prescription antidepressants. I would not argue that for many people, plagued by serious depression, drug therapy has proven invaluable. Yet, today, antidepressants are being handed out to help people manage common, ordinary life experiences, which may and possibly should be, handled un-medicated.

The recent lowering of the threshold for high cholesterol, in 2004 by a U.S. expert panel of nine members, (eight of the nine members were on drug company payrolls, according to Selling Sickness authors) has resulted in trebling the U.S. market for the new cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins), to 40 million (one in every four) adults. Excellent marketing of new drugs that have almost non-existent benefits for anyone without an existing heart condition! Yet, if attention is paid to the advertising hype, one would be led to believe by taking statins, everyone could benefit!

We've all seen the television ads, the ones wherein some prescription medication is presented, with absolutely no information concerning it, save for a voice-over telling us, 'Ask your doctor if it's right for you', or, some words to the effect of intimating our lives will be enhanced, if we merely pop this or that pill. I caught a promo for the doctor/hospital televison drama, House, wherein an ill child asks the main character, a doctor, if he, the doc, would like a hug, stating the hug would make the doc feel good. The doctor character replies, 'There are pills for that.'

Copyright © 2007 Jeannine Schenewerk