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.
