This NY Sun lidblower is a bit confusing. Solomont is rather misleading from the jump here. How can it be said that the "vast majority of drug development takes place within the private sector" if one of the co-authors of the study describes government-backed researchers and their counterparts in the private sector as "highly complementary" and with FDA Agent Pitts saying, "it would be hard to say which sector's work was more important."
Also, do the study's authors claim that there is something inherent in the private sector that gives it an advantage in drug development? Or is the advantage simply a result of the private sector's outspending of government funded research?
Update!!: Whoops! It seems we have a serious bias problem here. While trying to track down the actual study, I came across a hardhitting, fact-fucking blog to which Zzwycker is a contributor. Check out this entry from May 1, 2008: Alas, work has piled on, the usual array of office crises has intervened, and the defense of capitalism this year has proven more burdensome than even my rare and finely-honed bemused cynicism envisioned.
The Study!
Zzzzwycker's co-authors are from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, which was founded by a Dr. Louis Lasagna. I'm sure that's an alias.
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Without going into any great detail, I can see that there's exactly 57 card-carrying problems with this article.
ReplyDelete1. The Manhattan Institute is a partisan libertarian-oriented think-tank.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/about_mi_30.htm
2. No shit the drug companies actually develop the drugs. The article concedes (emphasizes, even) that the drugs are applications of publicly funded research. That was always the left-wing argument.
3. No shit pt. II. The other left-wing argument is that the drug companies are focused on the sort of "innovation" that involves the repackaging of very similar drugs. If they can skip the costly research and development phase (which they like to whine about so much) and just bring a proven drug to market, complete with an ad and doctor schmoozing blitz, they have every financial incentive to do so.
4. As you say, the article merely states that, as our system works now, the drug companies play an important role in drug development. No shit, pt. III. This merely reflects the fact that we have made the political decision to allow the system to operate in this way. There is no suggestion whatsoever that the private sector is inherently better suited to this task. In fact, given the amount of financial risk involved in trying to develop a truly revolutionary new drug, the private sector is probably inherently worse. And the article leaves totally open the suggestion that the drug companies' role is attributable to their ability to outspend the public sector (which, of course, is the result of two political decisions: the decision not to regulate drug prices and therefore to let the drug companies' revenues run wild and the decision to keep taxes down and underfund important public research).
57. There is not even the shadow of an argument that an ideal system should include this level of private sector involvement. It does not even rebut the left-wing critique. It merely restates the relationship in terms of a fruitful partnersip.
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ReplyDelete5. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this breakdown into three "scientific categories" deeply flawed? Their conclusions seem to hinge on classifying aspects of the 35 case studies as either significantly aided by the private sector or...not. And I don't really understand the numbers. For example, in the basic science category - is it 7 of 35 for private sector contributions and 35 of 35 for public or 7 of 35 private and 28 of 35 public?
ReplyDelete5A. Also, there doesn't appear to be any attempt to weigh the three categories. As far as I can tell, each category appears to be given equal importance.
5B. And isn't the fact the first step in the process is by far the weakest area for the private sector a point for the argument they are trying to refute?
Yeah, I'm definitely angry that WNYC brought this waste of time to my attention.