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Donald Light Responds on Drug Innovation and Costs
Here’s a response from Prof. Light to my post the other day attacking his positions on drug research. I’ve taken it out of that comments thread to highlight it – he no longer has to wonder if I’ll let people here read what he has to say.
I’ll have a response as well, but that’ll most likely be up tomorrow – I actually have a very busy day ahead of me in the lab, working on a target that (as far as any of us in my group can tell) no one has ever attacked, for a disease that (as far as any of us in my group can tell) no one has ever found a therapy. And no, I am not making that up.
It’s hard to respond to so many sarcastic and baiting trashings by Dr. Lowe and some of his fan club, but let me try. I wonder if Dr. Lowe allows his followers to read what I write here without cutting and editing.
First, let me clarify some of the mis-representations about the new BMJ article that claims the innovation crisis is a myth. While the pharmaceutical industry and its global network of journalists have been writing that the industry has been in real trouble because innovation has been dropping, all those articles and figures are based on the decline of new molecules approved since a sharp spike. FDA figures make it clear that the so-called crisis has been simply a return to the long-term average. In fact, in recent years, companies have been getting above-average approvals for new molecules. Is there any reasonably argument with these FDA figures? I see none from Dr. Lowe or in the 15 pages of comments.
Second, the reported costs of R&D have been rising sharply, and we do not go into these; but here are a couple of points. We note that the big picture, total additional investments in R&D (which are self-reported from closely held figures) over the past 15 years were matched by six times greater increase in revenues. We can all guess various reasons why, but surely a 6-fold return is not a crisis or “unsustainable.” In fact, it’s evidence that companies know what they are doing.
Another point from international observers is that the costs of clinical trials in the U.S. are much higher than in equally affluent countries and much higher than they need to be, because everyone seems to make money the higher they are in the U.S. market. I have not looked into this but I think it would be interesting to see in what ways costly clinical trials are a boon for several of the stakeholders.
Third, regarding that infamously low cost of R&D that Dr. Lowe and readers like to slam, consider this: The low estimate is based on the same costs of R&D reported by companies (which are self-reported from closely held figures) to their leading policy research center as were used to estimate the average cost is $1.3 bn (and soon to be raised again). Doesn’t that make you curious enough to want to find out how we show what inflators were used to ramp the reported costs up, which use to do the same in reverse? Would it be unfair to ask you to actually read how we took this inflationary estimate apart? Or is it easier just to say our estimate is “idiotic” and “absurd”? How about reading the whole argument at www.pharmamyths.net and then discuss its merits?
Our estimate is for net, median corporate cost of D(evelopment) for that same of drugs from the 1990s that the health economists supported by the industry used to ramp up the high estimate. Net, because taxpayer subsidies which the industry has fought hard to expand pay for about 44% of gross R&D costs. Median, because a few costly cases which are always featured raise the average artificially. Corporate, because a lot of R(eseach) and some D is paid for by others ““ governments, foundations, institutes. We don’t include an estimate for R(eseach) because no one knows what it is and it varies so much from a chance discovery that costs almost nothing to years and decades of research, failures, dead ends, new angles, before finally an effective drug is discovered.
So it’s an unknown and highly variable R plus more knowable estimate of net, median, corporate costs. Even then, companies never so show their books, and they never compare their costs of R&D to revenues and profits. They just keep telling us their unverifiable costs of R&D are astronomical.
We make clear that neither we nor anyone else knows either the average gross cost or the net, median costs of R&D because major companies have made sure we cannot. Further, the “average cost of R&D” estimate began in 1976 as a lobbying strategy to come up with an artificial number that could be used to wow Congressmen. It’s worked wonderfully, mythic as it may be.
Current layoffs need to be considered (as do most things) from a 10-year perspective. A lot industry observers have commented on companies being “bloated” and adding too many hires. Besides trimming back to earlier numbers, the big companies increasingly realize (it has taken them years) that it’s smarter to let thousands of biotechs and research teams try to find good new drugs, rather than doing it in-house. To regard those layoffs as an abandonment of research misconstrues the corporate strategies.
Fourth, we never use “me-too.” We speak of minor variations, and we say it’s clinically valuable to have 3-4 in a given therapeutic class, but marginal gains fall quite low after that.
Fifth, our main point about innovation is that current criteria for approval and incentives strongly reward companies doing exactly what they are doing, developing scores of minor variations to fill their sales lines and market for good profits. We don’t see any conspiracy here, only rational economic behavior by smart businessmen.
But while all new drug products are better than placebo or not too worse than a comparator, often against surrogate end points, most of those prove to be little better than last year’s “better” drugs, or the years before”¦ You can read detailed assessments by independent teams at several sites. Of course companies are delighted when new drugs are really better against clinical outcomes; but meantime we cite evidence that 80 percent of additional pharmaceutical costs go to buying newly patented minor variations. The rewards to do anything to get another cancer drug approved are so great that independent reviewers find few of them help patients much, and the area is corrupted by conflict-of-interest marketing.
So we conclude there is a “hidden business model” behind the much touted business model, to spend billions on R&D to discover breakthrough drugs that greatly improve health and works fine until the “patent cliff” sends the company crashing to the canyon floor. The heroic tale is true to some extent and sometimes; but the hidden business model is to develop minor variations and make solid profits from them. That sounds like rational economic behavior to me.
The trouble is, all these drugs are under-tested for risks of harm, and all drugs are toxic to one degree or another. My book, The Risks of Prescription Drugs, assembles evidence that there is an epidemic of harmful side effects, largely from hundreds of drugs with few or no advantages to offset their risks of harm.
Is that what we want? My neighbors want clinically better drugs. They think the FDA approves clinically better drugs and don’t realize that’s far from the case. Most folks think “innovation” means clinically superior, but it doesn’t. Most new molecules do not prove to be clinically superior. The term “innovation” is used vaguely to signal better drugs for patients; but while many new drugs are technically innovative, they do not help patients much. The false rhetoric of “innovative” and “innovation” needs to be replaced by what we want and mean: “clinically superior drugs.”
If we want clinically better drugs, why don’t we ask for them and pay according to added value ““ no more if no better and a lot more if substantially better? Instead, standards for testing effectiveness and risk of harms is being lowered, and ““ guess what ““ that will reward still more minor variations by rational economic executives, not more truly superior “innovative” drugs.
I hope you find some of these points worthwhile and interesting. I’m trying to reply to 20 single-space pages of largely inaccurate criticism, often with no reasoned explanation for a given slur or dismissal. I hope we can do better than that. I thought the comments by Matt #27 and John Wayne #45 were particularly interesting.
Donald W. Light
Derek Lowe is a medicinal chemist with over 20 years experience in the drug industry. He blogs daily on science and drug discovery at In The Pipeline
2012-08-13 07:33:36
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