The American Pharmaceutical Industry is the most profitable in the world. They continuosly justify their high prices on reseach and development expenses. This lie is being exposed by the hand wringing that Pfizer is doing over the discontinuation of clinical trials for one of it's new products.
The company said Saturday that an independent board monitoring a study for cholesterol treatment torcetrapib recommended that the work end because of an unexpected number of deaths.
News of this sent stock prices down for Pfizer, of course that is MUCH more important that saving the lives of the people that would have died if this medication came to market.
Pfizer is panicking because instead of investing more into research and development, it has adopted the industry practice of buying drugs under development from smaller companies or from Universities, instead of doing it's own basic research.
The publically held companies in the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) spend almost twice as much on marketing(30% of sales) as they do on research and development(15%), according to an analysis of SEC filing performed by the consumer advocate group Families USA. When the average profit of around 28% is added in, almost 4 times as much of your dollar spent is on TV ads, pens, totebags, lunches for doctors offices, samples, cash payments to speakers, and bonuses for execs than is spent in the lab finding new meds.
So when you cuss the pharmacist struggling to keep his/her store open when he/she gets paid $2.00 to dispense a medication that Pfizer gets $90, for because he/she spent 20 minutes getting your insurance straightened out, think about this and turn your anger where it belongs. Don't fall for the Bullshit Avalanche that is going to get very loud and deep when the Democrats push to have Medicare be able to negotiate realistic pricing.