""The money comes first for the drug companies, and therein lies the problem."

Little Hawk, if so, what's your opiniom about medical doctors? They are accomplices of the pharmaceutical industries because they are responsible for precriptions of expensive branded prescription drugs instead of cheaper generics.""


First of all let's get rid of the nonsense that is spouted about doctors.

When a new drug is discovered, the drug company is awarded what amounts to a patent, which confers the sole right to manufacture and distribute THAT drug for a fixed period of time.

There is therefor no generic alternative for doctors to prescribe during that period, and, by the time the "patent" expires, patients have become used to that name, and often REFUSE the generic alternative because they think they are being fobbed off with a cheap imitation.

None of this can be laid at the doctors' door

With regard to the drug companies, the situation is quite different.

They claim that the high price of many drugs is due to the massive research and development outlay involved, which must be recovered over a strictly limited time period.

I refer to this as the "Microsoft Defence", since it is the exact EXCUSE that Microsoft use to justify the extortionate price of their software.

The fact is that, with a very small number of exceptions, they will be selling millions, or even billions of units, and when the capital outlay and overheads are divided among that level of sales, cost per unit amounts for a tiny percentage of what they charge the end user.

In a very few cases, the drug will benefit small numbers of patients, and a high unit price will be justifiable.

There is also the cry that they only get new drugs from a small percentage of their research, but this to me is a red herring. Who else expects to be paid for failure (except of course bankers).

So, YES! I suppose in terms of their honesty and ethics they ARE just as bad as the bankers.

Don T.