Pharma companies have been dragged into the firing line this week. The UK’s Observer quoted Professor Michael Rawlins, the chair of the health watchdog, NICE, as saying the drugs industry is overpricing critical new medicines to improve its profits.

His remarks came in the wake of the current outcry surrounding NICE’s refusal to approve costly new kidney drugs for NHS use. He told The Observer, “We are told we are being mean all the time, but what nobody mentions is why the drugs are so expensive.”

He went on to qualify that some drug prices reflected the high marketing costs of the companies in addition to the cost of the research and development. “Marketing costs are generally about twice the spend on R&D,” he said.

Michael Rawlins isn’t saying anything extraordinarily new. In 2004, a New Yorker article criticising Astra Zeneca’s Shark Fin project referred to former New England Journal of Medicine Editor Marcia Angell’s scorching indictment of a book titled, “The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It”.

Angell, who had a ringside view of Big Pharma’s antics in her professional role as Editor-in-Chief has said that in her opinion, pharmaceutical companies are both corrupt and corrupting. In fact, the New Yorker quotes her as describing the drug industry as being, “now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit.” In her book, Angell also accuses drugmakers as taking their best ideas from government funded scientists, undertaking deceptive research and coming up with low-quality products.

A spokesperson for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has insisted that companies were committed to reducing prices. The spokesperson maintained that it costs on average GBP 550 m, and takes more than 10 years to bring each new treatment to patients. She said, “Naturally companies will look to recoup such costs through the price.”

Meanwhile, financial news giant Bloomberg ran an article on 18 August 2008 which refers to a study that found Merck & Co. carried out a clinical trial on their painkiller Vioxx which was more a marketing exercise than scientific research. The article quotes researchers involved in the study as saying Merck’s marketing department crafted the clinical study to persuade 600 influential doctors to participate so that they would prescribe the drug and talk about it to their peers.

Related Reasearch:
United Kingdom Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Report Q2 2008