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Death by a Thousand Cuts for “Big Drug”

By: Erick Brockway (Diary)  |  January 23rd, 2011 at 02:02 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Well, Obama and the left must really be happy with the way things are working out in pharmaceutical research. The evil “Big Drug” companies can no longer afford the R&D costs and FDA hoops to bring new life saving drugs to the market – so they are gradually grinding research to a halt. It’s no longer profitable.

PhotobucketIn steps Big Government.

Back in December, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), was proposed by advisors to the NIH to take point on researching new medicines instead of relying on that crappy old free market;

“NIH has never done anything quite like this,” Collins said in a telephone interview.

“We are asking how can we improve the success of getting the ideas from an early stage to a successful clinical trial, because there is a terrible failure rate right now.”

After taking the leftist sledgehammer to the industry, it’s no surprise that the Obama administration is “concerned” that new drugs may not be reaching the market quickly enough;

The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.

The new effort comes as many large drug makers, unable to find enough new drugs, are paring back research. Promising discoveries in illnesses like depression and Parkinson’s that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort.

The initial financing of the government’s new drug center is relatively small compared with the $45.8 billion that the industry estimates it invested in research in 2009. The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates, and drug companies have typically spent twice as much on marketing as on research, a business model that is increasingly suspect.
More- [my emphasis]

The pieces are coming together. Blow after blow by the left over the years attempting to destroy medicine as we know it, and who comes to the rescue? But of course, the same leftists who destroyed it in the first place, along with yet another billion-dollar agency (on initial start-up) to do its bidding.

Crossposted

COMMENTS

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  • usadying

    it’s Obama’s payoff to Pharma for the health care bill. The government is going to pay for their R&D. For now. Eventually, the beast will consume Pharma as well.

    • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
      • http://www.conservative-outlooks.com ladyimpactohio

        they’ll make them so expensive that neither the private sector insurance companies left in biz or the govt will pay for them. If Obamacare doesn’t get repealed. More “selective culling of the populace.” Mainly the diseases that have a low rate of cure or no cure, like cancer, Parkinson’s etc.

        • Common_Cents

          There’s plenty of drug lawsuits. Somehow I think they wouldn’t let me sue a govt agency if a drug did harm.

          They’ll prob assign liability to the drug companies but then where is the incentive for a govt agency to do careful work if they have zero liability?

    • http://www.redstate.com/etcartman Kenny Solomon

      ……and yeah, I went there. Can’t help it, because of the “nudge” factor.

      A c/p from my diary on the same subject – no link – not my intention at all to hijack this one.

      Naaaaaaah, those folks listed would never even remotely consider doing research and development of anything whatsoever directed toward eliminating diss???

      Repeat after me: ?It can?t happen here?.

  • secretp1nk0

    I take your central claim to be: government policy is responsible for the inability of pharmaceutical companies to afford new drug research.

    Neither of the news articles you cite support that view. NYT, in particular, notes that drug companies spend twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D. They have to spend more money convincing people to take the drugs than they do to develop them. NYT cites this as the reason that their business model has become unprofitable.

    Further,Medicare Part D does not allow Medicare (now the single largest bulk buyer of pharmaceuticals) to negotiate prices, which in free markets any bulk buyer would do. Paying full market value and guaranteeing a huge customer base (which does not have to reach into its own pockets, so inflated prices no longer present a barrier to sales) amounts to an enormous act of corporate welfare. This effective subsidy will make our agricultural subsidies seem quite modest.

    What is it, exactly, that Obama has done to make research unprofitable? Is it not more likely the fact that most drugs being developed today are boitic drugs which require the use of genetically engineered bacteria, which is much more expensive than the production of simple synthetic chemicals?

    Do you have any evidence at all for your central claim?

    • E Pluribus Unum

      First, those links in context did not purport to demonstrate the central theme. The first link was there to note that the NIH is now being tasked with what has previously been a domain of the free market. The second link shows that it is attempting to fill a void due to pharmas cutting back on R&D. Brockway did not cite either as evidence, per se, that government policy created that void.

      But now let us talk about that central theme, that government policy has become driven the costs of bringing a drug to market through the roof. Are you seriously telling me that a writer has to go dig up citations to demonstrate that? Really?

      You don’t see sports writers bringing it up that the sorriest NFL team would take the NCAA football champions head-to-head and club them like baby harp seals. It would be 70-0, and then the NFL team would start subbing in the cheerleaders who ALSO would beat the NCAA players like red-headed stepchildren. Why don’t they write about it? Because it’s just not news.

      Some things are so obvious that you just have to be silly to demand chapter and verse. This is one of those things. OF COURSE government meddling has driven the cost of drug development into oblivion. Well, government meddling and ambulance-chasing lawyers, who bought and paid for the government meddling.

      • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com Beaglescout

        And now the FDA forces pharma companies to prove the efficacy of drugs first, and safety as an afterthought. Given that efficacy is much harder to demonstrate, and that harder means more expensive, this change in focus has surely increased the cost of drug research. I’d be in favor of moving the FDA’s remit back to safety. It would also make approval of un-patentable herbal and vitamin products a lot more affordable and likely.

      • secretp1nk0

        You respond to my pointing out that absolutely no evidence for the claim that government policy is behind escalating R&D costs with the following:

        Are you seriously telling me that a writer has to go dig up citations to demonstrate that? Really?

        No citations are necessary, just tell me how it happened. What are the new regulations which are causing this? I am not aware of any new regulations which are raising that cost.

        You then give me some stuff about football which I am supposed to take as an analogy. I find it absolutely indecipherable. Perhaps you can explain how it pertains.

        You finally say that it is self-evident that government policy is the cause of the price of R&D rising. I do not find it self-evident at all, and I proposed what I find to be a much more likely explanation:

        Most drugs developed today are “biotic” or “biologic” drugs. Whearas to make, say, tylenol, lipitor, etc, all that is required are typical chemical reactions. Such drugs are simply synthesized from petroleum byproducts and other chemicals. Biotic drugs on the other hand involve the use cultures of genetically altered bacteria. The process of genetically engineering these bacteria is quite costly. I attribute rising R&D costs primarily to this shift from synthetic to biotic drugs.

        I think my story makes more sense than your story.

        • E Pluribus Unum

          I will find you at least a taste of the chapter and verse, of how it is that FDA bureaucratic nonsense and meddling, exacerbated when Democrats are fully in charge, have driven the cost of getting a drug to market have risen at paces massively higher than the research itself. I’ll get you new regs, policy, and procedure. But not a ton of it. This discussion is not worth all that much to me.

          It will have to be tonight or tomorrow night, can’t do it right now.

          I think I will pass, on trying to explain the football analogy. And your discription of biotic drugs and their cost — well guess what, I am a biologist. I get it. Of course it costs a ton more. But that does not explain what is going on here.

          • secretp1nk0

            Have you found a single new regulation which accounts for the new development that private drug R&D is becoming unaffordable?

  • YnotNOW

    And then step in to “solve” it. And also typical that the governmen solution is much weaker than the free market, but that doesn’t stop them.

  • phlogiston

    “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. When it stops moving, subsidize it.” (Ronaldus Magnus)

    Forget reading the Constitution to Democrats. They (and the rest of the country with them) would benefit more by reading Aesop’s fables to them. I’d suggest starting with the one about the goose that laid the golden eggs.

  • http://www.conservative-outlooks.com ladyimpactohio

    http://www.redstate.com/etcartman/2011/01/23/the-national-center-for-advancing-translational-sciences/