Pharmacy News:Pharmaceutical Industry Near Collapse Because It Is Stupid and Incredibly Bad at Its Business
Pharmaceutical Industry Near Collapse Because It Is Stupid and Incredibly Bad at Its Business
Plug the world’s tiniest violin into the world’s largest amplifier: the pharmaceutical industry is in a state of “panic,” the New York Times reported yesterday, because…because…well, because it is hopelessly idiotic. No, really, that is why. For instance:
This year alone, because of patent expirations, the drug industry will lose control over more than 10 megamedicines whose combined annual sales have neared $50 billion.
This is a sobering reversal for an industry that just a few years ago was the world’s most profitable business sector but is now under pressure to reinvent itself and shed its dependence on blockbuster drugs.
By “reinvent itself,” the Times means “do what it was supposed to be doing all along.” This $50 billion crisis is not caused by the government unexpectedly seizing the drug formulas and giving them out for free. It is caused by the drug companies’ patents reaching their long-anticipated expiration dates.
Patents last for 20 years. Things can be a little draggy at the start, OK, but let’s be very nice to the drug companies and call it a decade. So this sudden terrible problem has been obvious and on schedule for at least 10 years.
It honestly is that simple and that stupid. The pharmaceutical industry turned all its energy toward wringing as much money as possible out of the drugs it already had, and quit making any sort of plans that would lead to having a new (and, you know: medically useful) batch of drugs under patent in the future, when the patents on the old batch expired.
Now the pharmaceutical companies are laying off tens of thousands of workers because they are worried about their financial future, because although they are officially in the business of producing and selling drugs, they stopped producing drugs. Essentially, a global industry with more than half a trillion dollars in annual revenue is acting like a college sophomore who spent all semester holed up in his dorm room smoking pot, only to suddenly realize it’s exam week and he isn’t sure what classes he was even supposed to have gone to:
Still, the industry faces intense pressure from generic competition and has tried every tactic to ward it off, including extended-release versions of the same medicine and new pills that combine two ingredients. But 75 percent of all prescriptions in the United States are now low-price, low-profit generic drugs.
Every tactic, that is, except inventing new drugs. What have the drug companies been working on, instead?
The industry has also been unsettled by the scores of fraud, bribery and kickback cases involving conduct that federal investigators contend have added billions to the nation’s drug bill….
In 2009, Pfizer paid the largest criminal fine in the nation’s history as part of a $2.3 billion settlement over marketing drugs for unapproved uses. Some analysts say larger fraud and foreign bribery cases will come. The drug companies are responding with extra-careful sales training and vows to restrain marketing zeal. But the change in corporate culture could cost them: internal documents show some of the companies have profited spectacularly from seeking federal approval of a new drug for a limited use, then marketing it far more widely off label.
Other changes….include growing restrictions on gifts, fees and trips to influence doctors to use their products; curbs on the ghost writing of medical journal articles and a push for more disclosure of negative study results. As the golden age of blockbuster drugs fades, so are some of the marketing excesses of the past two decades — the tactics that helped bring in immense profits.
“Immense profits” doesn’t quite describe it. What the drug companies were doing, in that “golden age,” was looting their 2012 revenues for the sake of 2002 revenues. When Bernard Madoff did that, people called it something else.
New CO2-based drug processing method ‘may revolutionise industry’
A new method for manufacturing drugs using highly pressurised carbon dioxide could be set to revolutionise the pharmaceutical sector.
Pressurised carbon dioxide kept at room temperature has successfully been used to create crystals in the compound processing phase of drug production by a team of scientists at the University of Missouri.
The researchers were led by Department of Chemistry professor Jerry Atwood, who believes this new method may eventually be used as an alternative to the complex and often expensive methods currently utilised in drug production.
Commenting on the findings, which are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Professor Atwood noted: “I believe this could have huge implications for the pharmaceutical industry.
“In addition to streamlining processes, pressurising gas could circumvent some of the more difficult techniques used on an industrial scale, leading to better pharmaceuticals, more effective treatments and ultimately a lower price.”
Last month, a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers indicated that the UK pharmaceutical industry needs to undergo major reform to cope with modern demands.
Typical Guttridge equipment used in the pharmaceutical industry includes; Feeders – metering screw feeders – weighing systems
Drug bill is not the answer
The innovative pharmaceutical community shares the conviction that more must be done to combat disease and expand access to life saving drugs in least developed countries. However, patents are not the problem and gutting intellectual property rights as proposed in Bill C-393 is not the answer.
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has said, “My experience has been that almost no one in the world will die this year because of the cost or the lack of availability of AIDS medicine.” Instead, the main barriers include poverty, hunger, and access to basic health care and infrastructure. Clinton should know. His Foundation’s Health Access Initiative has helped more than two million people get access the medicines needed for treatment, which represents nearly half of the people living with HIV and on treatment in developing countries.
Our industry in Canada and globally works with the Clinton Foundation and participates in more than 200 partnerships in Africa and the developing world. These partnerships not only supply drugs at low cost or no cost, but also address the root causes of disease and death in the least developed countries.
So far, these initiatives have provided health interventions for 1.75 billion people. In addition, the global innovative pharmaceutical industry invested $365 million in research and development in 2008 to combat the diseases of the developing world.
Bill C-393 not only proposes to remove the safeguards included in Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime, it also sends the wrong signal about whether Canada supports research to discover new treatments to prevent and treat diseases throughout the world.
Parliamentarians want to do the right thing. So does our industry in Canada and around the world. But we need to work together on initiatives that will actually make a difference.