NIH's Efforts To Spur New Drug Research, Wall Street Journal Examines

[HuckleB]

NIH's Efforts To Spur New Drug Research, Wall Street Journal Examines

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=26455

"The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday examined how the US federal government is "trying to lure pharmaceutical companies" into investing resources in the development of breakthrough drugs by "offering to pay for and carry out early clinical trials" of the medicines. According to the Journal, there is a "dearth" of breakthrough drugs for conditions that doctors have long had trouble treating, in part because pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in "promising but untested ideas" developed by academics. To address the issue, NIH is investing $13 million in an "unusual effort" that is "expanding its role" from "cutting checks to universities for basic research to more broadly identifying and fixing structural problems in U.S. medical research that impede advancements in science," the Journal reports.

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More:

Government to fund new drug research
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=90386&n_date=20050621&cat=Science

[Celebration]

1. Oh good!!

Another subsidy for big business!!

Naturally the taxpayers get part ownership in the patents that result from this drug research, right?

[DrGonzoLives]

2. Because

obviously medicine has no other value to society.

Applying your standard, we shouldn't fun half the government programs we do, if any at all, since they don't have a return on investment.

[Celebration]

3. PLEASE!!

Are you saying you want to fund big pharma (believe me it will be) studies on drugs with our tax dollars, and continue to have NO say on pricing policy, continue to pay way more for the prescriptions than other countries that do not help fund that research, pay for the drugs through Medicare and Medicaid at whatever monopolistic price that the drug companies want to set, with no option to bargain on prices?

If we start funding research on drugs, the drugs should be generic from the start. That I could buy into!! There are most likely a ton of cures out there that are actually not patentable because they are herbs, or because they are off patent and used for something else. If we fund drug research it should be for those things. Some of them are very promising, but ignored for economic reasons.

[DrGonzoLives]

4. Do you know how much research costs?

See, I actually work in EVIL BIG PHARMA R&D, and it costs shitloads of money to do research - and this is just a generic company. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a possible drug candidate, only to have it fail in Phase III trials. That takes a bite of the budget.

It's nice to be all naive and idealistic about this, but it's not the way the world works. Pharmaceutical companies exist like any other company, to make money. If they can't make money off of something, THEY WILL NOT MAKE IT. Period. Doesn't matter what it will cure, they won't bother. Which is why government funding helps, as well as the orphan drug law, and so forth.

Yes, there is plenty of shit wrong with this industry, but I dare you to deny that they make something that Americans cannot live without.

[HuckleB]

5. There is no doubt that the system is flawed.

A percentage of profits should, IMHO, go back into the NIH fund for research grants. It makes no sense that such a mechanism is not in place. However, I am not for scrapping the system as a whole.