{"id":68,"date":"2019-04-12T03:34:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T03:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clladvocates.phillipsandphillips.nz\/?p=68"},"modified":"2019-09-12T02:03:57","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T02:03:57","slug":"the-indefensible-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clladvocates.nz\/?p=68","title":{"rendered":"In praise of big pharma: The Indefensible position"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row row_height_percent=”0″ override_padding=”yes” h_padding=”2″ top_padding=”3″ bottom_padding=”3″ overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ column_width_percent=”100″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ shape_dividers=””][vc_column width=”1\/1″][vc_custom_heading heading_semantic=”h1″ text_size=”h1″]In praise of big pharma:
\nThe Indefensible position[\/vc_custom_heading][vc_single_image media=”358″ caption=”yes” media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]I know, I know, Big Pharma are bastards! They rig clinical trials, bribe doctors to prescribe their products, medicalise everyday problems by casting them as diseases that suddenly \u201cneed\u201d expensive medication to control them and spend much more on marketing than they ever do on original research. And that\u2019s before we take into account tax dodges and the shameful role pharmaceutical companies play in scandals such as the opioid epidemic in the US. They are up there with Big Oil and Big Banks in the array of hellish multinationals we all love to hate.<\/p>\n

Except I can\u2019t really join the jeering throng myself. I literally can\u2019t live without Big Pharma\u2019s products. No amount of echinacea or rescue remedy or bark carefully collected from trees in Vietnam\u2019s highlands is going to reverse or even hold the progress of my chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.<\/p>\n

I know people who believe their \u201cnatural\u201d potions are what keep them healthy and that they will be effective against serious illness when it strikes but they seem to change their minds when their health actually collapses. They are suddenly happy to sidle off to conventional doctors to get the treatments they once claimed to be the work of the devil \u2013 aka Big Pharma.<\/p>\n

No amount of rescue remedy is going to reverse or even hold the progress of my chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One acquaintance, who enthusiastically endorses complementary medicines and nutritional supplements, was clearly disapproving when she heard I had enrolled in a clinical trial for a new targeted cancer drug. She scowled and said: \u201cOh, so you\u2019re going down the chemical route, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure was! And gladly! What\u2019s more, she was too when she later developed a chronic, debilitating disease and found that only Big Pharma\u2019s products could help turn her into a functioning human being again.<\/p>\n

If there are no atheists in a foxhole, there are also very few cancer patients whose first port of call is a homeopath. Such people do, of course, exist, but not for very long.<\/p>\n

Big Pharma may be bastards but at least their products mostly work, at least to some degree, and often astonishingly well. In my case, they have given me at least another two years of life so far and the hope of more to come.<\/p>\n

Of course, Big Pharma should be criticised and held to account for their shadier practices \u2013 and, god knows, there are plenty of them. But I\u2019d hate to live in a world without their products. Thanks to treatments made widely available by Big Pharma, tuberculosis, polio, Aids and other diseases that once killed or disabled thousands upon thousands can be controlled.<\/p>\n

I know someone who had hepatitis C for decades after a misspent youth. A year ago, he \u2013 a burly builder \u2013 wept when he was told the revolutionary drug he had been prescribed had cleared the virus from his body. His crippling fatigue vanished and his productive life has been restored.<\/p>\n

Serious childhood infections such as measles, diphtheria, rubella, mumps and tetanus have been mostly wiped out by vaccines. In my lifetime, the number of deaths from coronary heart disease has been slashed and life expectancy for many cancer patients keeps increasing.<\/p>\n

The most widespread criticism of Big Pharma centres on the cost of their drugs. The experimental drug I am taking is yet to be approved for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia by the US Food and Drug Administration, but it is likely it will cost at least $10,000 a month when it is commercially available. And this is a drug that is not a cure and which patients need to take until the wily cancer finds a way around its defences.<\/p>\n

When that happens, I may have to start paying through the nose for another drug, but if I\u2019m really, really lucky I\u2019ll be accepted onto another clinical trial.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image media=”357″ caption=”yes” media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]The day I was told I had been accepted onto my first clinical trial in 2015, I was so happy I tipped the waitress who brought me a hot chocolate in the hospital cafeteria a $20 note. She was taken aback but I told her: \u201cI\u2019ve had a very lucky day!\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, those drugs didn\u2019t work very well and put me in A&E a few times but they cleared the path for me to get onto a second trial. After three years of treatment, my blood is finally normal for the first time since 2013. And not only are the drugs free but the pharmaceutical company gives me a $10 petrol voucher and pays for my parking each time I visit the hospital, which is a nice touch.<\/p>\n

I have swallowed at least $360,000 worth of the company\u2019s drugs so far on this trial and if I\u2019d had to pay for them myself, I\u2019d have had to sell my house by now and be facing eventual bankruptcy just to stay alive.<\/p>\n

It seems entirely wrong that a company would charge so much for its life-saving products until you consider how long and hard the road to a successful drug is. It can take a decade or more to progress from laboratory to market. The cost of developing a new drug has been estimated as somewhere around $US160 million (by consumer advocates) to $US2.6 billion (by the pharmaceutical industry) but if the lower figure is anywhere near correct you\u2019d imagine there would be many more entrants into the market given the money to be made in such a profitable business.<\/p>\n

The best justification I can make for paying high drug prices \u2013 and the way I\u2019ll console myself if I have to start paying exorbitant sums to stay alive \u2013 is to imagine being up on a murder charge. Whether I was guilty or innocent, I\u2019d still want the best lawyer in town to keep me out of jail and give me my life back, even knowing he or she would charge like a wounded bull. I certainly
\nwouldn\u2019t be haggling over the price to save my skin.<\/p>\n

If that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, I\u2019d probably consider the eye-watering sum worth it if I could raise it. I wouldn\u2019t, of course, be thrilled to pay the bill \u2013 especially if I ended up in jail for a long stretch despite my counsel\u2019s efforts \u2013 but I\u2019d always take the chance, even if I was bankrupt at the end of it.<\/p>\n

Paying for life-saving drugs that give you another shot at living is like that, even though \u2013 like an expensive defence lawyer \u2013 it\u2019s always possible they may not succeed.<\/p>\n

Governments and public bodies are always welcome, of course, to take the million- or billion-dollar risks that Big Pharma routinely does in developing new drugs. But it\u2019s hard to imagine the public would have any appetite to be told on Budget day: \u201cThe government would have been in surplus without the $1 billion loss on our state-funded experimental drug development programme after all our clinical trials failed. We will have to make spending cuts all round.\u201d<\/p>\n

And guess who we are all going to turn to when increasing antibiotic resistance goes from being confined to relatively isolated incidents and suddenly becomes a widespread problem \u2013 particularly for the very young and the very frail? Not to mention when surgery for even routine procedures such as hip replacements and chemotherapy for cancer become extremely dangerous?<\/p>\n

Already scientists fear losing control of malaria and TB and sexually-transmitted infections such as gonorrhoea, syphilis and chlamydia as antibiotic resistance grows. Faced with that possibility, the UK government has turned its mind to providing incentives for Big Pharma to develop new antibiotics.<\/p>\n

Big Pharma prefers to create blockbusters that earn $US1 billion or more. The easiest paths to profitability are drugs to treat chronic conditions such as heart disease, not antibiotics that are taken as a one-off course for an infection. So the British government is mulling setting up a $US1 billion prize to encourage big pharmaceutical companies to develop new and effective antibiotics.<\/p>\n

Although drug companies are seen \u2013 with good reason \u2013 as rapacious, they do have a softer, more generous side: Big Pharma gives away the greatest proportion of its profits of any industry. In 2013, biopharmaceutical companies led all other corporations by donating 19.4% of their profits before tax to charitable groups.<\/p>\n

Most of this beneficence is in-kind product \u2013 ie, drugs \u2013 that also drums up new business and generates tax benefits, but it\u2019s a gift nevertheless. The good news is that even if you\u2019re not eligible for a clinical trial, you may get compassionate access to a drug that could transform your life. Big Pharma may be bad \u2013 perhaps very bad \u2013 but they\u2019re not all bad by any means.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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