Dear All,
There has been discussion on this list before
about the Pharmaceutical Industry, particularly
following the issues around the confidentiality of
the evidence submitted for NICE's Provisional
Appraisal Determinations. There were even calls
for the nationalisation of the Industry.
I hope this is appropriate for this list but I wonder
if those in the UK saw the Sunday Times supplement
this weekend and an article by AA Gill on the diseases
of Africa and the role of the Pharmaceutical Industry.
If not, here is a flavour:
“Why Africa is losing its fight against disease”
“I don’t know what makes you angry, what induces that tightening of the
stomach, the ball of the fist: being cut up on the motorway maybe, rude
waiters, queues at post offices, Bruce Forsyth. What ever teaspoon you
measure righteous fury in, be prepared to swap it for a bucket....like so
many trickle-down First World gifts, its been snatched away. Aventis, which
makes DFMO (referring to its use in sleeping sickness) has stopped making
it, and you can guess why – you’re ahead of me. It’s not worth it….Now the
men at Aventis aren’t heartless, money grabbing ambulance chasers really…
they gave the patent to WHO. Big hand for Aventis. Except that WHO isn’t in
the drug-making business…….By 2002 the global pharmaceutical market will be
worth $406b, and it’s growing – or should that be unhealthy – 8% a
year….Africa $5.3b. About 1%. Just so you completely understand, that’s what
the pharmaceutical industry spent on advertising last year. Feeling a little
hot under the collar yet? You see it’s not just sleeping sickness, it’s all
what is known jauntily as tropical medicine….There is more money spent
researching a cure for baldness than all tropical diseases. The
pharmaceutical industry says: ‘Hold on a minute, we’re not the bad guys
here, let’s keep it rational. We live in a cut-throat commercial world, all
that free market and democracy stuff you’re so keen to profligatise means
that our first call is to shareholders – no shareholders, no research; no
research and you’re back having your tumour removed with a hacksaw on the
kitchen table. You don’t go after the motor industry for not making
subsidised ambulances, and just think of all the good we do’…………The vast
majority of pharmaceutical research is spent on ‘me-too drugs, commercially
tweaked copies of other people’s best sellers, usually for the relief of
western excess, vanity pseudo-sickness and repeat prescriptions, while
three-quarters of the world with an average life expectancy under 50
screams: ‘Me too, me too’.... Have you ever stopped to think how weird it is
that you have to take malaria pills to go places where the population doesn’
t take them…..Drug companies can find prophylactics for rich western holiday
makers, but not for people who live with disease the other 50 weeks of the
year…If West Nile fever ever takes hold in the US, you can bet your
advertising budget that there will be a cure in months……As for the
drug-eat-drug free markets that the pharmaceutical markets have to exist
in…..get extended patents for drugs which they extend indefinitely by
upgrading them to new and improved, like soap powder…..The joke of all this,
if you’re up to a joke, is that AZT for AIDS wasn’t even discovered by Glaxo
Wellcome, which markets it. It was discovered at the Michigan Cancer
Foundation in 1964, using a publicly funded government grant. Enough,
enough. This stuff goes on and on until you’re numb with the horror, the
venality, the sheer breathtaking unfairness of it…. I hope this makes you
angry. I clearly hope you stay angry, because your sustained anger is the
last, best hope for Africa at the moment. Let me leave you with one last
fact. Of the 1233 new medicines developed between 1975-97, just 13 were for
tropical disease. Only four sprang the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to
cure humans. None were found on purpose.”
Do people think this is spot on or a little harsh?
If appropriate, be interested in any comments.
After all medicines occupy a fair part of the evidence
based agenda and this evidence comes in the main
from the medicines producers!
AD Jones MBA
29 Love Lane
Petersfield
Hampshire
GU31 4BP
UK
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1730 265718
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