| 来源类型 | Article
|
| 规范类型 | 评论
|
| Federal government can’t replicate private drug development |
| Thomas Peter Stossel
|
| 发表日期 | 2016-03-14
|
| 出版年 | 2016
|
| 语种 | 英语
|
| 摘要 | Cancer mortality is at an all-time low. That’s the good news. The bad news is that cancer still kills one in five Americans. We want better cancer treatments — and cures — for our loved ones and ourselves.
Ideally, the innovation responsible for the past and future progress against cancer and other diseases would come cheap. In reality, however, it is expensive — and necessarily so.
Unfortunately, politicians such as Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton have pounced on that fact to call for government price controls on drugs produced by private pharmaceutical companies.
One myth invoked to justify such action is that the prices the industry charges represent profiteering behavior.
Another is that, since the science that leads to medical innovation allegedly arises from publicly funded research performed in academic centers, the government should manage or even take over drug development.
For example, Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, has connected these dots to put the plan succinctly: “Take excessive profit out of the equation and ramp up what is already a robust public medical research infrastructure.”
These are dangerous — and false — ideas that misrepresent the nature of drug development. Clamping down on private industry with price controls and supplanting its work with federal programs will lead to fewer new drugs and worse patient outcomes.
The main source of public funding for medical research is the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But the NIH does not conduct the specialized R&D that creates new medicines.
How do I know? I’ve enjoyed continuous NIH research funding for over 40 years, and no one is living one second longer or better for it.
Moreover, no one is actively prohibiting NIH-sponsored researchers from developing drugs, but most don’t do so. One reason is that academic culture values intellectually titillating discoveries and experimental virtuosity, not the seemingly menial trial and error efforts that are necessary for practical advances. I know that too, because I’ve been trying to develop drugs.
This cultural divide between academe and industry is a prominent reason nearly 90 percent of recently approved medications received no public funding during development.
In addition to its cultural predilections, the public medical research enterprise is ill-equipped to drive drug innovation. It lacks the expertise to navigate the complex and lengthy FDA approval process. Nor does it have the scale and systems in place to manufacture and distribute drugs.
What’s more, drug development itself requires many specific sophisticated skills, such as chemical formulation and toxicity testing, which are almost nonexistent in universities. If the government were to subsidize such activities and take over clinical trial support, far less funding would be available for basic research that advances knowledge, some of which informs medical innovation.
Progress against cancer and other diseases is all the more remarkable given the steep challenges faced by drug makers. Only about five in 10,000 potential new medicines make it to the human testing phase and are submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval — and most fail to achieve it. And it’s 100 times costlier to get a drug approved by the FDA compared to a half-century ago. Calls for the government to take over drug development are misguided.
Demonizing high drug prices might play well for focus groups and the media.
But dismantling the drug-development chain with price caps would serve only ambitious politicians, not the millions of patients who stand to benefit from the new treatments driven by private R&D. |
| 主题 | Health Care
; Health Economics
|
| 标签 | cancer
; drug industry
; Medical innovation
; Pharmaceuticals
; Pharmaphobia
|
| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/federal-government-cant-replicate-private-drug-development/
|
| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
|
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
|
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/260246
|
推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Thomas Peter Stossel. Federal government can’t replicate private drug development. 2016.
|
除非特别说明，本系统中所有内容都受版权保护，并保留所有权利。
