To think that in general pharmeceutical companies are NOT evil corporations?

[toptramp]

I have just started taking anti depressants. I went on a different forum last night for users and it was outrageous the amount of crap they were getting from some people telling them that they were being hoodwinked by pharmeceutical companies who are only interested in money and that ads are in fact a placebo effect.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with a company making a profit in the first place and I don't think that these companies put profit above human health. Profit is a benefit of improving people's heath and of course a lot of research goes into producing drugs and hard working scientists etc muct be paid.

I have seen the Constant Gardener and I am aware of the vaccine debate and I have no doubt that politics plays a big part in drug production. The person who finds the cure for cancer for example is going to be subject to huge pressures (that is assuming the cure hasn't been found).

I think that pharmeceutical companies are a GOOD thing generally.

Well I think so but then I would they pay my wages. If people saw the amount of testing and paper work before a drug is prescribed to them I'm sure they would feel more confident.

YANBU.

I do think there is something wrong with profiting from healthcare.

Unfortunately we are a capitalist society, therefore these things with be done within a capitalist model. But morally: no, I think it's wrong to treat pharmaceutical research as a profit-making exercise.

I think it depends on how much profit you think it is acceptable to make on people's health. I don't think people complain about pharmautical companies making profits in general - just how much profit they actually make. As for putting profit before health - yes, they do. To give one example, antibiotics arent considered profitable enough so pharmaceutical companies aren't trying to develop new ones despite a very real need for them given the resistance that is developing to existing ones.

I don't care how much profit the makers of Cipralex (anti-depressant) make. It has changed my life, enabled me to be a happy adult and means I can drive without having panic attacks.

£3 miilion a day is spent researching 1 drug at 1 fairly small pharma company. That's a heck of a risk/outlay for a drug that may never make it to market and will in fact never cure anything (it improves quality of life).

I think you are wrong that they don't put profit above public health, but at the same time I think ADs do work and we would have worse public health in general if there were no pharmaceutical companies. Ideally we'd have more ethical pharmaceutical companies that followed best practice in marketing and research publishing and then have profitable companies and better public health.

Why wouldn't you care theo? Why should they be able to make as much profit as they like simply because someone needs what they have? I wonder what would happen if farmers worldwide decided they wanted to up their profits. I have a feeling that plenty of people would care about that!

The manufacturers of the various contraceptives I have used in the past 18 years have made an important difference to my life and opportunities so I don't think they are evil if they have made a bit of a profit on Cilest and Cerazette.

However bumbleymummy makes an interesting point. The companies are able to choose how they spend their money as they are private companies, so some research which might benefit public health enormously might not get done because it won't make them enough money. That can't be good for the medical community or for society in general.

No idea what the solution is though. Government funded research?

AnxiousPanxious - why do you think it's wrong to profit from healthcare?

Do you think it's worse than profiting from food production (farmers), or creating shelter from the elements (builders)?

It costs a lot to get a successful drug to market. There are millions of compounds that don't make it (and trials and other testing are very expensive). Then a patent only lasts a few years.

Do you realise how many pension funds relay on pharma stock?

How many people they employ in the UK? Ok, so that's a lot less recently - only 1 US-owned pharma company doing research in the UK because it's cheaper to do it elsewhere, UK-owned companies are making loads of redundancy.

I don't buy into the whole conspiracy thing.

Not to get into an animal testing thing as well, but I knew someone who walked out of a lecture about anti-biotics because the lecturer was talking about how penicillin would kill a guinea pig, so if it had been tested on a guinea pig first, then it wouldn't have been progressed. Apparently, that was all that was wrong in animal testing and anti-biotics shouldn't be made at all

Oh so MSD didn't inject 30,000 children in developing countries with the river disease vaccine that saves children's sight last year then ? For free.
They cannot make a song and dance about the charity work they do because that's the whole point it's a charitable act.

Let's talk about publication bias, the burying of bad results, the fiddling of data that has led to unsafe drugs coming to market?

I know that pharmaceutical companies are highly regulated, but even more needs to be done.

What like Vioxx? When Merck ended up getting sued for millions and millions of dollars?

It's not worth them pushing unsafe drugs onto the market - or it most certainly isn't any more. Far too expensive and virtually ruinous for their reputation.

Merck haven't paid out a penny last time I looked into it, the cases were over turned at appeal. I'm sure the children that haven't been blinded are grateful along with their parents.

GSK weren't terribly well behaved over seroxat. Roche weren't brilliant over Librium etc.
Too many pharma companies won't allow generics when they could be helping third world countries.

I agree. Corporations aren't people, they don't have feelings, they can't be good or evil. They are created in order to make a profit for the shareholders, so you always know their motives, although that means their motives are not usually altruistic. In my view it is pointless to expect corporations to do the moral thing for its own sake -- we as a society need to regulate them so that they are forced to act more in line with the common good (which, I agree, includes profit to people who work hard/invest in human health). For example, maybe pharmaceuticals need to pay a research tax that would be put towards truly independent research. (NOT research that they produce and then pay some scientist to put her name on.) There are lots of areas of medicine that need to be explored but don't get funding because there doesn't seem to be a big profit potential. (breastfeeding, anyone?)

I am just finishing reading the Constant Gardener my comment to my husband was, "This wouldn't happen, and not because pharmaceutical companies are too good to do this, but because they don't have to they have so much economic and political power that they don't need to bother murdering people."

Not sure these two sentiments are related!

I work for a non pharma healthcare company, which is small in their terms. But we spend approx $200m a year in direct research, plus $80m in sponsored research (ie that done in universities/hospitals). Every penny of that is a gamble as you never know if it will ever come to something you can actually sell. And then it costs many millions more to bring to market, especially in todays regulatory enviroment.
So based on that gamble, you have to load your product line with things that have a mass market in the developed world which then offsets maybe not making money on things that are for many less people, or in a market where you won't get much per dose.
That said, I don't know one person in the company who wouldn't love for our whole company to shut down tomorrow as a cure had been found for the disease we specialise in - we aren't heartless, and everyone is affected by it. People often spout rubbish about the cure for cancer, and it is hugely insulting to eveyone involved in the industry to suggest anyone would ever not want a cure to be given to everyone.

Don't drug companies now only have a certain time recoup their R&D costs before the patents run out and other companies are allowed to make their own generic versions.
I think the alternative medicine industry is far more dangerous. They are allowed to practice with no body overseeing them, practitioners can claim what they like without providing any proof that they work etc

My DH works for a pharma company and I think that like many companies the truth is somewhere in the middle.

To make them focused on more of 'societies' objectives rather than 'company' type objectives then they would need to be privatised and not for profit and I dont imagine this would be affordable for the UK and in addition you would end up with wealthy countries controlling drugs, which in a way is worse than companies controlling them.

Yes they spend lots on research and tend to give back to communities but also drugs are tested in the third world and they do not necessarily prioritise drugs that help eradicate third world disease.

Perhaps people should become more involved in lobbying their MP's tpo put pressure to deliver drugs to the third world or join one of the organisations that already do this.

You're sure about that Heswall - not a penny....?

Some good developments being made with regards to a malaria vaccine, as an example of benefits to developing countries vs profit...

HIV antivirals - another area where huge developments have been made, predominantly affecting developing countries, with not much in the way of profits to be hoped for.

Interestingly one of the biggest charitable funders of medical research was created using pharma industry money...