We should be willing to spend the money in return for the innovation.

We should be willing to spend the money in return for the innovation.

The pharmaceutical industry likes to depict itself as a research-based industry, as the source of innovative drugs. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is their incredible PR and their nerve.

Consider the clinicaltrials by which drugs are tested in human subjects.5 Before a new drug can enter the market, its manufacturer must sponsor clinicaltrials to show the Food and Drug Administration that the drug is safe and effective, usually as compared with a placebo or dummy pill. The results of all the trials (there may be many) are submitted to the FDA, and if one or two trials are positive—that is, they show effectiveness without serious risk—the drug is usually approved, even if all the other trials are negative.

A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome.

Why should anyone - the state, the medical profession, or anyone else - presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure as their life is ending?

The United States is the only advanced country that permits the pharmaceutical industry to charge exactly what the market will bear, whatever it wants.