“Socialism stifles creativity! Profit and the free market are why we are number one in drug research.”
You’ve heard it OR some variation of it from faux patriots waving faded flags, right?
Turns out it never was true and never will be unless we get our sciences back on track…
It is widely believed that the United States has eclipsed Europe in pharmaceutical research productivity. Some leading analysts claim that although fewer drugs have been discovered worldwide over the past decade, most are therapeutically important. Yet a comprehensive data set of all new chemical entities approved between 1982 and 2003 shows that the United States never overtook Europe in research productivity, and that Europe in fact is pulling ahead of U.S. productivity. Other large studies show that most new drugs add few if any clinical benefits over previously discovered drugs. I discuss ways in which Congress, employers, and insurers can increase the value of drugs and revitalize the U.S. pharmaceutical industry.
Fact is we never caught up to those socialists in Europe and – probably because they base decisions on science a little more than the average American – they are pulling out further ahead now… I am truly shocked to find out that what the right wing teabaggers/birthers/deathers have been screeching about is the exact opposite of reality. Not really surprised, either, are you?
And yes… I know it is not really all because of science… It is just one of many disasters in America, right now, that have collided to kill good research.
Aside from stupid Republican talking points, the actual facts are like all of American industry, the drug industry is driven by Wall Street. Therefore drug research in America is geared towards products considered favorable on Wall Street, to the extent investor money might be available to the drug manufacturer. Notoriety and celebrity is the glitter that captures Wall Street’s imagination and loosens the financial spigot. Routine drugs that can really heal or ease human suffering are of little interest to the billion dollar money movers of American capital. Such is the bane of American capitalism.
All of the great revolutionary invention in America has come from socially insignificant individuals dedicated and determined to physically manifest the visionary object of their dreams. Hidebound American capitalists have hijacked the successes of these little socially obscure people to build a decades old myth that such grand and noble adventures are somehow the beneficiaries of vaunted pristine Wall Street visionaries. Where was Wall Street when Henry Ford was scratching around trying to find $500 or $600 to fund his grand venture, the creation of “everyman’s Automobile”? Nowhere to be found.
Currently, Wall Street has successfully stifled Research and Development in virtually all major American companies, to the point that when the world emerges from the current economic depression, we will no longer be the home of the world’s inventors. Obviously invention is the yeast of manufacturing that makes the growth of industrial power possible, Whether the subject is automobiles or prescription drugs, any country whose ability to exercise its creative imagination is compromised by the whimsical perceptions of its money lenders is in serious trouble.