how to get big pharma to put needs before profits

[Gabes-Apg]

interesting article .....

http://theconversation.edu.au/how-to-ge ... ofits-8730

New medicines must be approved as safe, efficacious and of good quality before they can be prescribed. But authors of two recent articles in the British Medical Journal argue that governments should introduce new criteria to the approval process.

The first of the articles notes that most new medicines provide only marginal benefits; of the 218 new drugs approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 1978 and 1989, only 34 (15.6%) brought important therapeutic benefits.

based on this article.... if the drug companies have to prove that a medicine does bring therapeutic benefit then the medical fraternity would have to acknowledge that the condition exists in the first place.....
what comes first?? .. the drug or the coding number for the condition mmmmmmmm

[Joefnh]

That's disturbing but not surprising. It would make perfect sense that the drug companies would have to prove that there is sufficient benefit to the patient.

As the article mentions, is the new drug any better or safer than pre-existing drugs already on the market

This type of trial is designed to establish whether it’s better for the patient to take the drug in question than not to do so. But it’s not possible in this type of trial to determine whether the new drug is better (and, if so, how much better) than already available medicines (or other therapies).

The BMJ articles argue that regulators, such as the TGA, should raise the bar for marketing approval – a new drug should be approved only if it’s found to be at least equivalent to an existing alternative in terms of criteria such as efficacy and safety.

I've heard the expression: "A pill (or 'cure') in search of a disease"

That sounds about right for the way some of these meds are developed today