Pharmaceuticals are arguably one of the most contentious of all goods and services traded in the market. While medicines are as much a necessity as foods and water, they require more technical expertise and official approbation in the manufacture. Above all, they carry a moral weight that most market products do not (The Economist, 2014). This idea of moral can be linked to the recurring debate over whether a good health (which is represented by medicines, in this case) should be considered a basic human right, or just a normal commodity. A large portion of such controversy actually lies in an existence of drug patents: should we promote for longer-lasting patents or should we have their duration shortened? Why do we need a patent on almost …show more content…
This privilege had dramatically driven up the price of medication, making medicines unaffordable to the poor. This problem—also known as health inequality—is now listed as one of the major issues in developing countries. There are many documented cases showing that poor people are losing out as a result of drug companies focusing on the most marketable medicines rather than the most urgently needed. For instance, let us consider the story of the drug eflornithine, which was originally developed in 1980s to treat cancer. The drug turned out to be ineffective as an anticancer agent, but it was found to be effective against sleeping sickness, a disease that accounts for thousands of deaths per year in Africa. However, Hoechst Marion Roussel (now Aventis), the company that developed it, ceased its manufacture in 1999, citing marketing failure (MacDonald, …show more content…
As long as it still causes a huge gap of disparity, I cannot say that I am in favor of the system. Patents exist to reward creative inventors by granting them an exclusive right to make use of their own ideas, on the basis that doing so will give a strong impetus for innovation. Our goal should be to find the point where the cost and benefit are in balance, which can be considered as the so-called social
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
Dr. John Abramson’s book Overdosed America debunks the myths about the excellence of American medicine. Abramson backs up this claim by closely examining research about medicine, closely examining the unpublished details submitted by drug manufacturers to the FDA, and discovering that the unpublished data does not coincide with the claims made about the safety and effectiveness of commonly used medicines. Abramsons purpose is to point out the flaws of the pharmaceutical industry in order to warn the readers about the credibility of the drugs they are buying. Given the critical yet technical language of the book, Abramson is writing to an audience that may include academic physicians as well as those who want to learn about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharmaceutical and biotech industries must be free to develop and research life saving medicines and other advancements that will benefit society. If this cannot be done, progress would never be made. People would still be contracting polio a...
"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system are not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in order to cure their ailments. For instance, they may present symptoms that are perfectly harmless, and lead potential citizens to believe that, because of these symptoms, they are "sick" and in need of medication. In some instances, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States misleads both the public and medical professionals by participating in acts of both deceptive marketing practices and bribery, and therefore does not act within the best interests of the consumers.
More than often, American’s argue that if we have the technology to gain access to these “miracle meds”, then we should take advantage of it. To receive an opposing view, the National Institute of Drug Abuse asked teens around America why they think prescription drugs are overused, and the results were shocking; 62%: “Easy to get from parent's medicine cabinets”, 51%: “They are not illegal drugs”, 49%: “Can claim to have prescription if caught”, 43%: “They are cheap”, 35%: “Safer to use than illegal drugs”, 33%: “Less shame attached to using”, 32%: “Fewer side effects than street drugs”, 25%: “Can be used as study aids”, and 21%: “Parents don't care as much if caught”. I believe the major problem here isn’t the medication, but instead the fact that our nation is extremely uninformed on the “do’s and dont’s” of prescription medication. When “the United States is 5 percent of the world’s population and consumes 75 percent of the the world's prescription drugs” (CDC), there is a problem present, no matter the reason. Clearly, many critics believe the breathtaking amount of pills we consume in America is simply for the better good, but tend to forget the effects that are soon to follow.
...this action will like come at huge cost, considering a few years ago there was a lawsuit against a drug manufacturer that reformulate its product at the end of it patent life. Even though court held the complaints to be void, the case came under public scrutiny at that time.
Yu, Winnie and Joel Hay. 1999. “Drug Patents and Prices: Can we Achieve Better Outcomes?” Measuring the Prices of Medical Treatments. Pages 27-28.
In America, it has become a battle to earn a high paying job to cope with the expenses of a typical American. It has become even more of a battle for some people to afford medical prescriptions to keep healthy. Health becomes a crucial issue when discussed among people. No matter what, at one point or another, everyone is going to stand as a victim of the pharmaceutical industry. The bottom line is Americans are paying excessive amounts of money for medical prescriptions. Health-Care spending in the U.S. rose a stunning 9.3% in 2002, which is the greatest increase for the past eleven years. (Steele 46) Many pharmaceutical companies are robbing their clients by charging extreme rates for their products.
With prescription drug prices continually on the rise, especially in recent years, many have posed the question of how to control them. In their article “Why Don’t We Enforce Existing Drug Price Controls? The Unrecognized and Unenforced Reasonable Pricing Requirements Imposed upon Patents Deriving in Whole or in Part from Federally Funded Research,” Peter Arno and Michael Davis address and pose a solution to this long standing and hotly debated issue. The piece is an article published in 2001 as part of a student edited journal from Tulane Law University titled “The Tulane Law Review.” Although written in 2001, the problems addressed in this article hold the same, if not more merit than they did when the article
There is much to be done if the current pharmaceutical industry is to be put in check. Currently, they are essentially allowed to do whatever they wish, as there are almost no regulations on how they price medications. Clinical trials are buried if they don’t show positive results, and people have died as a result. Legislation has been proposed to change this system, but the pharmaceutical industry wields even more power than the NRA in terms of influencing politics. For this to change, politicians would have to be courageous and pass laws to regulate this currently indomitable force.
Manufacturers that sell dangerous medications can face government fines, as well as lawsuits from injured consumers. Experienced attorneys recognize that the only message these companies understand are ones that affect their pocketbook. The manufacturers of popular drugs all have had to pay the price for their dangerous actions at one time or another.]”
Phatak, A. (1998 йил 01-01). The pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. Retrieved 2012 йил 19-01 from Indian Journal of Medical Ethics: http://www.ijme.in/064cr131.html
In recent years’ health reform has been a driving force in the United States political system. If you watch the news you will undoughtabley hear how citizens, the government, or the economy is or might be effected by some sort of change in medical regulation. One of these hot topic issues is the cost of prescription drugs. Every major drug market besides the United States regulates the price of drugs in some way (Abbott and Vernon). By the United states not doing so many believes it opens consumers up to be exploited by large pharmaceuticals companies. Other believe regulating drug prices limits investment, innovation, and competition in the pharmaceutical industry. In many ways both views are correct yet the later may have more long term lasting
In the business of drug production over the years, there have been astronomical gains in the technology of pharmaceutical drugs. More and more drugs are being made for diseases and viruses each day, and there are many more drugs still undergoing research and testing. These "miracle" drugs are expensive, however, and many Americans cannot afford these prices.
The FDA is payed $1,841,500 by pharmaceutical companies for every drug that a company wants on the market. Medicinal herbs are practically free and have rid the world’s populations of disease, and malnutrition, for millennia. Now, they are deemed as a silly or even a dark approach to medicine. Even though, based on a study done by the Alliance for Natural Health International, pharmaceutical drugs are 7,750 times more likely to kill a person than herbal supplements. The World Health Organization has estimated that about eighty percent of Africa’s population accepts traditional, and herbal medicines, as their primary source of health care. If we were to do the same, then the drug companies would suffer terrible losses monetarily, and the FDA would soon follow suit. Examples of Madison’s theory occur in every type of situation.