How much does research and development cost?
Although the pharmaceutical industry emphasises how much money it devotes to discovering new drugs, little of that money actually goes into basic research. Data from companies, the United States National Science Foundation, and government reports indicate that
-companies have been spending only 1.3% of revenues on basic research to discover new molecules,
net of taxpayer subsidies.
-More than four fifths of all funds for basic research to discover new drugs and vaccines come from public sources.
Moreover, despite the industry’s frequent claims that the cost of new drug discovery is now $1.3bn (£834m; €1bn), this figure, which comes from the industry supported Tufts Center, has been heavily criticised. Half that total comes from estimating how much profit would have been made if the money had been invested in an index fund of pharmaceutical companies that increased in value 11% a year, compounded over 15 years.26 While used by finance committees to estimate whether a new venture is worth investing in, these presumed profits (far greater than the rise in the value of pharmaceutical stocks) should not be counted as research and development costs on which profits are to be made. Half of the remaining $0.65bn is paid by taxpayers through company deductions and credits, bringing the estimate down to one quarter of $1.3bn or $0.33bn. The Tufts study authors report that their estimate was done on the most costly fifth of new drugs (those developed in-house), which the authors reported were 3.44 times more costly than the average, reducing the estimate to $90m.
-The median costs were a third less than the average, or $60m.
Deconstructing other inflators would lower the estimate of costs even further.
Ver anterior:
Esto es crisis(I)...: Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money?
Ver también:
Entradas
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario