Posted by Michael Wonder on 16 Oct 2017
The cost of developing drugs is insane. That paper that says otherwise is insanely bad.
16 October 2017 - You probably know this poem, or at least the story it tells. One man likens the elephant to a wall, another to a spear, a third to a snake, a fourth to a tree. The point is that each sees only part of the animal, and is thereby deceived. Well, here’s how the same thing happened when it came to a new estimate of the cost of developing a new medicine.
For years, the pharmaceutical industry has relied on estimates from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, the most recent of which that puts the cost of bringing a medicine from invention to pharmacy shelves at $2.7 billion. Last month, two cancer researchers grabbed headlines by asserting that estimate is way off. Their number, published in JAMA Internal Medicine: $648 million. In an editorial that ran alongside the new study, journalist Merrill Goozner wrote: “Policymakers can safely take steps to rein in drug prices without fear of jeopardising innovation.” There are reasons to think that (more on that later), but this paper does not add to them.
