How would you change things so drug mistakes never happened again? And yet the drugs would be all cheap and easily affordable? How do you eliminate marketing without eliminating competition, i.e. creating a legally-enforced state monopoly?

You painted yourself into another corner. The alternatives, if any, are not workable. Maybe, just maybe, the system we’ve already got is the best possible one.

If you’re ever going to work out real answers to things, you have to get past the knee-jerk “Death to the Corporations!” response.

OH, and I never said I didn’t trust doctors or pharmacists. But they only have the info Big Pharma gives them.

Remember Vioxx?

The current level of regulation and safety takes a great deal of time, effort, and money. This is not compatible with low prices. You can impose price controls. The regulation will still take a great deal of time, effort, and money. You tell me where that’s coming from.

You can somehow eliminate marketing. Explain the circumstances under which a particular pharmaceutical company would accomplish this. What would happen with its competitors, not all of which are in this country?

You don’t trust the companies, you don’t trust the doctors or pharmacists. Despite the vast amount of information easily available to almost anyone, you don’t believe people are capable of making their own decisions. Now what?

Who DO you trust?

You talk about an informed public. It is NOT the responsibility of people to get fucking degrees in medicine or pharmacology or chemistry so they can understand the medications they’re taking. They depend on doctors who depend on pharmaceutical companies because doctors don’t have time to research drugs themselves. You are ill informed and barking up the wrong tree.

Oh, and don’t forget that the average intelligence of the general public is rather low and someone with a 100 or 125 I.Q. is not going to be able to understand anything about their drugs. Oh, but you’re a Republican and as far as you’re concerned, those people don’t have a right to safety and life. You, sir, are a piece of work.

Edited to change a typo.

The FDA runs on extreme overkill mode in this area. Step one would be to pull the focus onto safety and not quite as much on effectiveness. If someone wants to sell snake oil, and it’s proven harmless, what’s the problem? Effectiveness becomes obvious sooner or later. The medical and nutritional folks operating on the perimeters of the industry have been beaten up a lot in this area.

A top priority, as with all products, is an informed customer. Accurate labeling should be a rigid requirement. Snake oil should damn well contain 100 percent pure oil of snake.

“Hang them all from the nearest tree,” which seems to be a universal remedy for anything done by any company larger than a one-room grocery store, isn’t that effective as a solution either.

I’m very good at coming up with solutions. They just aren’t the ones you want to hear.

That should be offensive to any right minded capitalist on at least theoretical grounds. It isn’t because capitalism stands for short-term profits by any means.

This is a great example of America’s economic structure. Subsidies for large companies such as Big Pharma, Big Farm, Big Oil, Big Banks and “capitalism” for individuals.

And we are raised from birth to regard capitalism as a superior economic system for the individual and the US as the first bastion of capitalism.

It’s usually a good idea to question our beliefs from time to time.

Arf

I use this one.

This article was written in 2003, and says Lipitor had been on the market six years. That would make its total run under patent about 14 years, which isn’t bad.

It costs an enormous amount of money to get a drug tested and approved by the FDA. Far more than the initial basic research. The companies pay this money, and they don’t get it back if the drug isn’t passed by the FDA.

The patent clock starts ticking when the approval process starts, not when it’s done. A patent lasts 20 years, but by the time the drug can be legally sold there may be less than half that time left on the clock.

Streamline the approval process and make it less expensive, and it would solve a lot of problems. But looked at another way, you’re paying that load of money for a very high level of safety. Is it worth it? Or not?

Once a patent is gone, anybody can make the drug as a generic. The generic companies don’t have to do the research or approvals, so their costs are far lower.

You’ll get drug companies without marketing departments when you don’t have competition any more. That will only happen if the industry is consolidated into a single government-run monopoly.

When nobody has a choice, you don’t need marketing any more. Would it be worth it?