Update 41 - More on Pharmaceutical Companies

The more I read and learn about what the most profitable businesses in the world are and how this impacts ordinary people like me and you, who have a "chronic" illness, the more worried I get about motives!

The following two charts are from a you tube presentation on Medical companies:

This first one shows the sales in billions, from 2006, and the breakdown on how it is used.  With Marketing & Admin being twice the size of Research and Development!  Doesn't that just some it up? These numbers seem t have increased substantially over the past 8 years, but from what I can tell, the proportions have remained the same.

What is also very pertinent is the statement in white at the bottom of the chart that states profits from drug companies run at 20% whereas all companies together is 6.5%?  There are graphs around to confirm this is still the difference today -

So why should the pharmaceutical companies change what they are doing and actually "cure" anyone.  They are businesses and doing very nicely (out of us) thank you!

Here is even more proof that the pharmaceutical companies are more interested in keep things going than actually curing people:

Note:  NME - stands for New Molecular Entities - New approaches?

So out of the 93 new drugs approved 75 were "me too" drugs that are doing the same job as existing medications, that is 80%. 12 were new but had no improvement and only 6 were new/improvements on existing drugs. That is just over 6%!

Thus out of the $37 Billion for R&D only $2.2 Billion is delivering new drugs that may be game changers. If you analyse that against profits that is less than 5% and against marketing it is around 3%!!!!

The link to the you tube clip (and plenty of longer versions) is below:
Pharmaceutical Profits

I will get back to HSCT next time......