Drugs...So What For?

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What are the main incentives big companies use to decide to make a new drug? Many people still believe that creating new drugs is for helping those who are in dire need of it to treat whatever disease or ailment he or she may have. To some degree this is true, but the majority driving factor is the cost of inventing and developing a new drug. According to an article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, the number of drugs invented per billion dollars of R&D invested has been cut in half every nine years for half a century.  This means that the people who are needing new drugs are not getting them due to the costs.  I believe that money is an important factor in creating new drugs, but should not be the driving one.  I hope i the future our society can remove roadblocks that keep new drugs from reaching patient, and really see that individuals who suffer need these new drugs.

According to an article in Forbes, "The Cost Of Creating A New Drug Now $5 Billion, Pushing Big Pharma To Change," Matthew Herper explains the business side of new drugs being created.  This is a reliable source because it is backed by real time facts and statistics from credible institutions such as the UCSF, Genentech, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, and a multitude of scientists and economists.  This was published only a few years ago, and still is prevalent information to use today because the market for new drugs remains the same.  Matthew Herper, a full time staff member of Forbes is a journalist who covers science and medicine with a passion.

According to the article, "the cost of inventing and developing a new drug, a cost driven by the uncomfortable fact than 95% of the experimental medicines that are studied in humans fail to be both effective and safe."  This shows how companies creating these new drugs must raise the price of a successful drug high enough to compensate for the money lost from another experimental drug.  "A company hoping to get a single drug to market can expect to have spent $350 million before the medicine is available for sale. In part because so many drugs fail, large pharmaceutical companies that are working on dozens of drug projects at once spend $5 billion per new medicine."  Here the article explains the logic behind drug prices being so high.

Argument: The uncomfortable fact is that 95% of experimental drugs fail to be both effective and safe for human use, costing companies billions of dollars.  Companies must ultimately determine if how much money they spend creating a drug will help them gain or lose profit.

• Future Resource Question: 
• Would government funding help lessen the need to create new drugs for profit, and instead help with creating new drugs for the purpose of helping individuals who are in need of them?
• Does the creation of drugs take into the consideration of the people who need them, when determining the incentive to make them?
• Does having money as a main incentive for new drugs actually help more than having the incentive to create new drugs for other incentives?