Comment Re:See. Patents/Copyright spur innovation. (Score 2) 491
And don't forget, they've got twice as much money for advertising those drugs as they have for researching those drugs and running those clinical trials.
With good reason I would suspect.
Developing a new drug is a very risky and very expensive thing. R&D costs money and lots of it, while generating exactly zero dollars in income.
The sales of said drugs (i.e. the fruit of R&D's labor) however, is what generates income, and is what ultimately covers the incredible cost involved in developing it in the first place (as well as the cost of failed research efforts on drugs which "never panned out" and thus never made it to market).
If the percentages spent on promotion verses R&D were reversed (e.g. only 13.4% on marketing verses 24.4% for research and development), they might not be able to generate enough income to cover the cost of all the dollars they were sinking into developing their new wonder drug, and then where would we be? After all, "He who has a thing to sell and goes to whisper in a well, is not as apt to get the dollars as he who climbs a tree and hollers!"
Now I'm no fan of seeing so many advertisements for drugs in so many magazines, etc (since such advertisements are mostly lots of hype sprinkled with heavy doses of fine printed medical gobbledy-gook which I can neither read what with my poor eyesight nor understand what with my non-existent medical training), but bashing drug companies for spending more on advertising than your average non-drug company is hardly a convincing argument that they are therefore all greedy sons of bitches. (There are much easier ways to make money than developing new life-saving drugs after all, so greed (i.e. wont for profit) can't be the sole motivating factor).
Bottom line: given a choice between fewer life-saving drugs but a couple extra dollars in my pocket verses a realible supply of some life-saving drug that I might some day need in order to survive (at the marginal cost of more dollars going into their pockets instead of mine), I vote for the latter thank-you-very-much.
NOW THEN, getting back on topic...
If they have indeed had more than plenty enough time to recoup the costs incurred in developing said drug and are now simply wishing to prolong their ride on the profit train their investment generated because they inadequately failed to plan ahead for said train eventually reaching the end of the line which they knew was coming, then fuck 'em. They should have planned ahead better.