Is the distrust of the pharmaceutical industry warranted??

Miprocin wrote: »

There are some problems with the way research is conducted and the with peer review system. Investigator bias, for instance. Double-blind studies are one way around this and are useful. Anyway, I don't want to stray too far off topic so I'll leave it there.

Double-blind studies are only of use for certain therapeutic areas in trials though. An example being oncology trials, where the massive ethical (and probably legal) issues preclude the use of double blind.

That said, I certainly agree with your post. Working in pharma, I've seen doctors and sites removed from trials for trying to shoehorn ineligble patients into trials - particularly in paeds trials.

As for GSK, being wary of what we can write on boards, all I'll say is talk to anyone who has had some commercial exposure in the industry or former GSK employees and see what their opinions are regarding poor practises.

To get back to the original point however, I think the general public will always have some misperceptions about the industry. It's inevitable given how huge it is and how many working parts are involved, not only in R&D but the commercialisation as well.

Sugar Free wrote: »

Double-blind studies are only of use for certain therapeutic areas in trials though. An example being oncology trials, where the massive ethical (and probably legal) issues preclude the use of double blind.

Genuine question, why would double-blinding not be suitable in such trials?

steddyeddy wrote: »

Several words. Thalidomide was the result of stereo-chemical differences between racemate forms of the drug. The effects of stereochemistry on binding equilibrium between drugs and receptor were wildly underestimated at the time. This was a general ignorance in the part of the science of the time not a conspiracy by the pharm companies.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. Stupidity and conspiracy are one and the same if the end result is dangerous drugs.

Want to also point out that the medical and pharmaceutical insistence that the very real and horrific withdrawal symptoms of SSRI anti-depressants is another reason to distrust them. Same applies to Finasteride, a drug which kills the 5-alpha-reductase enzyme in men, causing permanent depletion of a key androgen - this was repeatedly denied by pharmaceuticals even when men who had taken it were presenting with permanent loss of sexual function, gynecomastia, and other issues. In both cases, the lapse of time between side effects being reported and the medical / pharmaceutical community finally being goaded into acknowledging them was completely unacceptable.

There are valid reasons to mistrust any large organisations driven by profit and handling large quantities of money.

The main issue with pharmaceutical companies is there actions to protect copyright. When a drug is approaching the end of licencing they come out with a new drug to do the same thing but with a slight difference so they can retain rights to the drug. They then pay for studies to say is better and charge twice+ the original price.

The whole research study system is corrupted with pay for results. They do buy up companies and hold back drugs that would compete with more profitable drugs they already sell.

They are businesses so use the same predatory methods as all other businesses

steddyeddy wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of distrust placed in the pharmaceutical industry or "big pharma" in recent years. Are these concerns warranted or is it a general distrust of science at play?

Both. There is a lot of mistrust/misaprehension of science, I think driven by lazy entertainment and mainstream media portrayals of science and scientists, plus some serious political re-framing and obfuscation of contentious issues.

However, the pharma industry is regulated for a good reason and in principle it should be even if there were no evidence of wrongdoing by pharma companies. The number 1 motivator of any private corporation is profit. That is naturally going to come into conflict with the number 1 motivation of society (people) at least some of the time. So we regulate, so that at least in a bureaucratic, awkward sort of way, the human element is represented more fairly.

It doesn't work as well as it needs to, of course. Plus there's plenty of evidence, as others have mentioned, that Pharma companies can and do put profits before people.

stankratz wrote: »

There are those who would have you believe that pharma companies are sitting on cures to fatal illnesses, but because there is fúck all profit to be made from curing and megabucks to be made in treating, these cures will never see the light of day.

Scary if true, unfortunately there's no way for your average Boards poster to find out for sure.

Sure there is, it fails basic logic. Most of the cost of bringing a drug to market is at the research stage. If you're a pharma company, do you spend $1 billion on developing a drug for a rare disease and then realise it won't be profitable? Unlikely. But let's imagine for a moment you didn't do your homework and here you are, $1 billion in debt with only a handful of patients to treat (plus your share price just fell because you look like idiots). You've already put your money down, you might as well sell the thing and try to claw back to break even point, even if it takes decades. And some will say it's not worth the cost of marketing, but if the patient pool is really that small, your marketing costs will be small too. Or if you can't be bothered, you cut your losses and sell the licence to a generics company or a pharma company that specialises in orphan drugs.

Pharma companies have enormous turnovers and huge profits. Are we really suggesting that they don't know how to plan, market and cut their losses if needed?

Gilead Sciences is a great company in my opinion.