Essentially, my point is that pharmaceutical companies aren’t R&D organisations — they’re not set up for it. They leave the heavy scientific lifting to research departments at universities, and focus their efforts on the last mile to market: fine-tuning, characterisation for patent development, trials, commercialisation and marketing.

Suggest you read Information Feudalism, Drahos & Braithwaite, for a more thorough examination of hos this sort of thing works.

L

Discovery R&D and registration trials run into the billions for originator pharmaceuticals this is a fact. These costs are not there for generic manufacturers.

Yes they spend shite loads on marketing no doubt to make as much money as possible prior to patents expiring.

I’m not sure what point your trying to make that profits are high for multinational pharma – I’m sure they are, but they’re a completely different beast from a generic pharmaceutical supplier.

Add to which, the bulk of initial discovery and R&D costs are borne by publicly-funded universities, while even the costs of testing, certification and commercialisation of pharmaceuticals are heavily subsidised throughout the world.

L

Large companies will invest where ever they can make a buck over the short but preferably medium to longer term.

The reality is the big pharma companies would never have put back even 20% of the profits they were taking offshore….. the other problem is that many were the architects of their own demise, regardless we’d be mad to be paying the prices that some of these medications are going for in the states in even across the Tasman when we can get them at a small fraction of the cost.

Strange that the MD at Glaxo at the time told me it was brilliant timing.

Actually, they have several other choices. They can choose not to operate in that market. They can persuade the public to to pay the premium for a partially funded or non funded brand (which they do in ads that tell people to ask for a particular product by brand name). They can convince doctors to prescribe by brand name and refuse pharmacists permission to substitute (the Medicines Regulations specifically forbid changing the brand of a medicine without the doctor’s permission.) They can also grow the market by convincing new buyers (such as health insurance companies) to get into covering non-Schedule drugs. As I recall, ING was running ads a while back promising just that.

Marketing.

L