Pharma Giles writes ,,,

Billy Brilliant talks about PharmRMA highlights for August…

“Isn’t everything brilliant nowadays? Take patent protection for pharmaceuticals, for example. Companies get a patent on a new drug and that means that no-one else can make it, not even if they can make it cheaper. That’s brilliant.

So companies can charge what they like and make loads of money and all of the company executives can get paid millions. That’s what capitalism is all about, innit? Brilliant.

Some of the money even gets used to discover new medicines, so the companies can get more patents and make even more money. That’s brilliant, that is.

Except that pharmaceutical companies have forgotten how to discover medicines any more because they’ve fired all of their scientists to cut costs and make even more money. But that’s brilliant as well. Except for the scientists, of course...

And now the government is passing new laws to stop people importing equivalent drugs that are cheaper than our patented ones. This means that our pharmaceutical companies won’t have to cut costs to compete with imports and can go on making huge profits. Bloody brilliant.

And what about health care reform? Isn’t that brilliant? We pretend to make an $80 billion commitment to health care reform, and in exchange, pharmaceutical companies don’t have to cut their prices and can go on charging what they like for medicines. Brilliant.

And what about that paper published in the August 25th edition of Health Affairs, ‘Global Drug Discovery: Europe Is Ahead,’ eh? That’s brilliant, innit? At least for Europe, anyway.

But what about us, eh? We’re brilliant as well. Last year, America’s pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies continued to lead the world in research of new medicines, investing a record $65.2 billion in R&D. Brilliant.

OK, we didn’t discover anything, but we did spend loads of money trying. And that’s brilliant, innit? Brilliant. Everything’s BRILLIANT.”


Is it me or are the well-funded ranks of pharmapologists sounding more and more like the Fast Show…?