“In response to some recent comments on the blog some of you may be encouraged to read Ben Goldacre’s new book, or watch his new TED Talk. We are acutely aware of the issues he raises and these need to be put into context! In short, if you create perverse incentives you get perverse behaviour. A well known colleague of mine, from the Netherlands, said to me two weeks ago that the Pharmaceutical Industry is rapidly taking over from the Banking Industry as the bad boys on the block. If this is the general public perception it is very serious; we need a well regulated and functioning pharmaceutical sector for improving the health of the world. Let’s hope the politicians are listening! I have quietly been suggesting to the MS Pharma Companies that they need to form a group to discuss this issue and to see what can be done to improve things. We need to be educated about why it takes so long, and costs so much, to develop drugs and why the drug markets are currently so dysfunctional; they are not behaving rationally. Unless the they start talking and cooperating the Red Queen may be a dead Queen!”
A short excerpt from the introductory chapter:
Ben Goldacre’s new TED Talk:
Previous posts in relation to the Red Queen effect:
13 Jun 2012
The Red Queen Effect, is a term taken from the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. The Red Queen said, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” The marketing departments …
26 Sep 2012
This reminds me of the red queen! Each company feels it has to keep up with … http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/ectrims-red-queen-is-live-and-running.html. Wednesday, September 26, 2012 9:05:00 …
27 Nov 2011
The Red Queen Effect, is a term taken from the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. The Red Queen said, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” The marketing departments …
12 Sep 2012
This drug was used for decades off-license at very little cost to the NHS (~£800-£1,000 per patient per year). However, once a trial was done and the drug licensed under the EU orphan-disease legislation the cost went up to …
MS Pharma Companies that they need to form a group Maybe they have already and it serves to keep prices high.
This is a little depressing. But I have to say I've noticed some of these things before. For instance I often wonder why they don't run clinical trials against Tysabri, that would make a lot of sense, but they don't. This is clearly a conscious attempt to hide the fact that new drugs aren't as good as Tysabri. Then they say silly things like, "No you don't understand, this is a new -first line- treatment." Which means that it is a new drug that just doesn't work very well and has bad side effects like all of the other first line treatments. Great. I'm bipolar on big pharma, they do some great things, and we definitely need them, but they also act bizarrely, as you said.Shine that sunlight on the system! Let us see what's really going on. Please publish more of this type of story.
Oops, I accidentally watch Ben's previous year presentation. I watched the new one and there's some overlap, but it drives home the point of a broken system with regard to publication bias. What's interesting is this year's presentation is a much more fixable problem. I wonder if there are MS trials that are unpublished that show that the first line drugs are not very effective.
Look through trials on clinical trial.gov and see what has been reported. Maybe we should do it as a student project?I do not think we got to see the data on oral tolerance phase III trial (done by academics with a pharma behind them) or the glaterimer acetate primary progressive trial-terminated I think why?. Maybe I am wrong and the information is readily to hand
Academics have to be so careful to patent their discoveries before announcing them to the world. Look at NET cancer- a bloke in Sweden found a potential cure, but its sitting in a freezer somewhere as he published his findings before he got a patent, and now none of the Pharma companies will touch it for clinical trials as they would make no money out of it
Hey we got a tweat from Ben Goldacre. Maybe Bad MS Pharma is next.ben goldacre @bengoldacreRT @Patientensicht: Blogposting of MS researcher Gavin Giovannoni (Barts and The London) about Bad Pharma http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.ch/2012/10/bad-pharma.htmlltiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.ch/2012/10/bad-ph… …
Academics at least in Team G know about this and keep our gobs shut until we file.