Laurie Powell – Pharmaceutical manufacturers are businesses, not healthcare companies. Their business is making profitable drugs that will be widely prescribed by doctors and used by as many consumers as possible. As business people, their primary loyalty is to their shareholders. All decisions on which compounds to develop into drugs and which to bring to market are driven by profit, the competitive landscape, and speed to market.
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet
There are several key therapeutic areas that are dependable money makers and have the potential to produce possible blockbusters: drugs to treat cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and central nervous system disorders. Many of the diseases that these drugs treat are lifestyle related illnesses. If many of these symptom sufferers led a healthy lifestyle, they could reverse and/or prevent many of these diseases. But Pharma is not in the disease prevention business. They are in the disease treatment business. Doctors are not taught to promote wellness and prevent disease, they are taught to treat disease. So, prescriptions are dispensed as first line therapy for most symptoms.
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