Just has to be said

Since Anna has told me I'm not allowed to post this on our business blog, it ends up here.

I want to take this opportunity to just get something off my chest. Speaking as someone who has worked within the pharmaceutical industry for my entire professional career out of high school, I simply can’t stand the direction this industry is going in and no longer want any part of it. Nothing I am going to say here is in any way original. Nearly all of it, I am sure, can be found multiple times in blogs, newspapers, webpages, etc. I just have to get it off my chest and say something about it though.

I feel that there is something alarmingly wrong with a healthcare industry that is set up to make profits. First off, the thought of profiting from the illnesses of others is just not something that civilized people should be doing to one another. To me the worst offenders in this arrangement, aside from the insurance companies profiting from both the medical professionals AND the patients, are the pharmaceutical companies. The reason for this is simple really. An industry in which the goal is (or should be) to heal people and cure their illnesses stands directly in the way of a maximization of revenues. For the medical establishment, it does not behoove them to create healthy patients that will leave healthy and never need to come back. This is, of course, an oversimplification since people are always coming into contact with new germs, having accidents, or anything else that would result in the need for medical attention. So, in a way the healthcare industry knows that there is ALWAYS be business. Things start to get particularly dicey when you get into the pharmaceutical side of the equation. The best business model possible for a drug company is to create an army of consumers that have to keep coming back on a regular basis and buying more product.

Just to hit the highlights. in order to get a drug approved by the FDA there is the exhausting process of drug discovery, feasibility, toxicity studies, multiple levels of clinical trials, then you are finally to the point where you can submit the application to the FDA. During the approval process you have to continue testing over a period of three years to prove drug stability. Finally, you get approval, after which you celebrate and continue testing a selection of commercial batches of the drug over the aforementioned three year stability study each and every year, until you are no longer producing the drug anymore. All the while collecting further evidence of the effects, and side effects of your drug from patient info that could potentially pull it right off the market unexpectedly. All of this is a MASSIVE investment and it takes a long time to make this money back. Going through all this for a drug that only treats an obscure disease that only affects a small percentage of the population is a terrible investment, and will never get beyond the feasibility stage. The system being what it is, therefore, creates a glut of drugs that will treat a chronic and common illness like asthma, arthritis and diabetes. Often times you will have an all out race amongst several companies to get an application together for very similar drugs. The FDA is first come first served, after all.

Anyway, the problem arises when you start to think about the business of treating the sick. When it is thought about as a humanitarian mission, the interest of the patients comes first. When it is thought about as an avenue for riches, as it is for any major drug company in existence, then the interest of the company becomes the first (and only) concern. If, for instance, a drug discovery unit comes up with a “miracle” drug that will completely eradicate a particular disease, but also another compound that will treat the symptoms and allow the patient to live long and happy, but only if they take the drug everyday for the rest of their life. We would all like to think that the powers that be at that company would make the first drug, but if they are thinking in the best interest of their shareholders, and their own wallets (which is in fact the only job of a CEO) they would pick the second and happily collect their monthly stipend for “curing” all these people. I’m not saying that it happens, or has ever happened, but I am not naive enough to think that it couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Believe me, I hear the company line nearly every day. “Remember, we are helping people.” “Our mission is to improve people’s lives.” I am also in on enough business meetings to know that nearly every decision is made based on timelines and budgets just like the any other industry. The problem is that this shouldn’t be like any other industry.

I am an American. I believe in capitalism and the free market. I am also realistic enough, and have seen enough in my life to know that we can’t continue on this path when it comes to the treatment of disease. A drastic change in philosophy is needed or at the very least an increase in government oversight.

I don’t pretend to have a solution. But the practice of profiting from the sick and dying is despicable and can not be allowed to continue.