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Current Events » in reply to If they can't recoup their investment, then they'll have no choice

myths about drug companies
Davin L. — (archived)

Drug companies, even ones with no over-the-counter offerings, spend much more on advertising than they do on R&D- 10 years ago they couldn't advertise by law (advertising something that only a skilled professional is supposed to determine if you should use or not is a little dubious).

A LOT of that 'R&D' budget is in the form of 'soft kickbacks', where researchers and clinicians are given cumulative speaking fees of up to 5000 dollars cash to attend a conference - a conference usually held at a 4-star resort that usually lasts 4+ days with only 2 days of sceduled activity. This is a very common practice. Many researchers have not paid for a vacation for years, but still ski in aspen every year or soak in Hawaii.

The R&D expendiature for most drug companies is on-par, as a percentage of net, with that of nearly any other technology based or large engineering company.

During the 90's a series of very unfruitful and unwise fundamental research decisions were made (monoclonal antibodies as the holy grail, and large molecule biologics), followed by substantial losses in the bubble. Since the late 90's, fundamental research for the drug companies has seriously declined. A lot of their R&D budget is going into re-patenting old drugs in new forms, like weekly prozac or monthly GIRD pills, just to squeeze the last drops of money from their patent assets.

When you hear the drug comapnies complain about drug pricing, imprting from canada, regulation and etc- remember, a lot of their problems are of their own design.

Davin L.

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