Good luck with future medical miracles out there! As drug companies make the big bucks it MUST be time to slap em down. Wyeth just lost a lawsuit due to the Supreme Court deciding that states could adjust their standards for drugs beyond the FDA requirements.
(A PA had injected one of Wyeth’s drugs in a contrary way to the label instructions. A woman lost her arm and has now won $7.3million)
How much loss to litigation/loss to reimportation of drugs/loss due to (soon to come) price controls should companies take? What will be there breaking point where pharmaceutical companies decide it’s cheapest and yet most profitable to rewrap old drugs into new drugs (Tide to NEW Improved TIDE) vs actually introducing new drugs into the market?
Just as there is potential danger from the way in which Americans take the power of the antibiotic for granted, so, too, one of the greatest threats to our health and continued welfare is that Americans in the present day, and particularly their leaders, are taking for granted the power, potency, and progress flowing from life-saving medical innovations. And in so doing, they may unknowingly prevent the kind of advance that could contribute as vitally to the welfare of the 21st century as the discovery of the antibiotic altered the course of human history for the better in the century just concluded.
We assume someone somewhere will create a new drug for whatever ails us. In this environment, that assumption is not very accurate.
(ht Hugh Hewitt)
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