We live in an outlandish world. The majority of the pharmaceutical industry is so pathetic (along with the FDA), the powers that be will approve a drug based on “it’s better than placebo” and allow billions of dollars to exchange hands only to realize that its the equivalent of a sugar pill.
It’s time to realize we are in a new era of medicine. We have the old tried and true generics along with a few new brands that do the trick. And then we have a whole boatload of drugs that are hovering around the possibility of maybe possibly being 5% more effective than placebo.
My hope for the future is not in pharmaceuticals. It’s about having a relationship with your patients, giving them tools that will help them change their behavior (make it almost idiot proof), and give them incentives to do so (maybe even an economic incentive considering the top 3 killers in America have behavioral causes).
Big Pharma is about 5% better than snake oil. When the whole industry can only give us 6 new drugs per year, we have to stop pissing our money away throwing them incentives to sell us more snake oil flops. I mean, there’s some executive at each company that literally says in front of an entire group of people:
“I know it’s been suggested in our trials to be 5% better than placebo, let’s market the hell out of it so that they think it’s 50%!”
Meanwhile they take no responsibility for the largest section of our economy that is in reality bankrupting our country.
Where is the social responsibility?
I know, I’m an irrational idealist.