Freakonomics on Pharma

The Freakonomics blog has an interesting piece on pharmaceuticals.  It basically asks five experts what is the best secret in the industry.  Here were a few of the quotes from the posting…

1. “Events are revealing that many pharmaceutical companies, along with their consulting academic physicians, have engaged in practices that obscure or misrepresent information about their products.”
2. “The United States is subsidizing prescription drug prices for the rest of the world.”
3. “The obscene profits made on generic drugs by the large chain stores.”
4. “While most people understand in a vague way that modern biomedical science is advancing at a remarkable pace, many people are less aware that we have been far less successful at translating science from the laboratory bench to the clinic. This is not to say that the pharmaceutical industry has been quiescent; total spending on health related research by the drug industry has increased from about $6 billion in 1980 to about $39 billion in 2004. During that period, basic science research has increased the number of potential drug targets (the biological site on which a drug is intended to act) from 500 to more than 3,000.”
5. “Underpinning many of the marketing strategies of big drug companies is a very sophisticated and comprehensive plan to widen the boundaries of illness, and create an environment in which more and more formerly healthy people are defined as ‘sick.'”