From Howstuffworks
"Here’s where it gets crazy … (the incidence of) the placebo effect itself is increasing."
"Approximately half the drugs that fail in late stage trials fail because they simply can’t outperform placebos".
Tag Archives: Drug Industry
The Size of the Global Pharmaceutical Industry
In 2005, global pharmaceutical sales totalled US$602 billion with growth of 7% from the previous year.
At an average annual growth rate of 14% between 1994 and 2003, pharmaceuticals top the OECD manufacturing trade growth stats, ahead of coke, refined petroleum products and nuclear fuel (8%), medical, precision and optical equipment (7.5%), aircraft and spacecraft (7.4%), and motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers (7.3%).
In 2006 the 10 largest pharmaceuticals firms accounted for 46 per cent of global sales.
Ref. Medicines Australia
The Pharmaceutical Industry and Doctors’ Prescribing Habits
An interesting talk on the Australian Broadcasting Commission ‘Ockhams’Razor’ radio program about the marketing of (legal) drugs by big pharma through the medical establishment. The speaker is Professor Christopher Norden, from Adelaide Hospital and the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Sciences. He talks of his own experience of the many incentives offered to practitioners by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe their wares.
From Professor Norden’s talk:
"It is about a hundred years since that great Canadian-born physician Sir William Osler, Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford, complained about the increasing influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the medical profession. If he knew how this influence had increased since then, he would be turning in his grave at the way the industry now dominates doctors’ prescribing habits. It does this not only by direct and indirect pressure on the doctors themselves, but also by encouraging the public to ask for scripts and to demand that governments provide the money."