

The Truth About the Drug Companies - aaronsw
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244

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tokenadult
"Of the seventy-eight drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only seventeen
contained new active ingredients, and only seven of these were classified by
the FDA as improvements over older drugs. The other seventy-one drugs approved
that year were variations of old drugs or deemed no better than drugs already
on the market. In other words, they were me-too drugs. Seven of seventy-eight
is not much of a yield. Furthermore, of those seven, not one came from a major
US drug company."

This is an interesting observation if the claim by drug companies is that they
innovate, while the claim by critics of the companies is that they don't
innovate much. The source cited in the submitted article appears to be the
most reliable source for such an observation. I wonder what a longer time
series would look like: was 2002 chosen because it is the most recently
reported year (could it be, in 2009?) or because it was an unusual year? What
would a longer span of years look like in this regard?

