The American Spectator

AmSpecBlog

Ten Years and a Billion Bucks.

By Ryan L. Cole on 6.2.09 @ 2:13PM

Former HHS Deputy Secretary and all-around brilliant guy Tevi Troy (full disclosure: he also happens to be my ex- boss) weighs in at Commentary on the threats posed to medical innovation and health care quality by the vilification of Big Pharma, increased regulation and the coming Obama Care.

Liberals and conservatives appear to agree on the need to unleash the possibilities in medical discovery for the benefit of all. But it cannot be ordered up at will. It takes approximately ten years and $1 billion to get a new product approved for use in the United States. Furthermore, only one in every 10,000 newly discovered molecules will lead to a medication that will be viewed favorably by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Only three out of every ten new medications earn back their research-and-development costs. The approval success rates are low, and may even be getting lower-30.2 percent for biotech drugs and 21.5 percent for small-molecule pharmaceuticals....

Scientific discoveries are neither inevitable nor predictable. What is more, they are affected, especially in our time, by forces outside the laboratory-in particular, the actions of politicians and government bureaucracies.

Read it in its entirety here.