The huge health benefits the public enjoys from drug innovation have earned the industry little good will. You don't need to be a maven to know that the makers of life-saving drugs are among the most loathed companies. "Big Pharma" rounds out the corporate big bad three in media reports these days, along with "Big Food" and the genuinely evil "Big Tobacco."
And now, according to the New York Times' coverage of a new AARP report, the cost of medicines are skyrocketing. Are they really, or did the Times just fall for AARP's salesmanship?
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, makes no secret of his view. On his blog, Gladwell points out that the AARP report only found a price increase in brand-name drugs, a small and gradually shrinking segment of our pharmacopeia. Generic prices are falling slightly, according to a different AARP study.
Gladwell got it right in calling for a correction. "The Times' lead read: 'Prices of the most widely used prescription drugs rose sharply in this year's first quarter.' Wrong, wrong, wrong," explained an exasperated Gladwell. "It should have read: 'Prices of the most widely used prescription drugs fell last year.'" (This process will continue: the patent on Zocor, for instance, is about to end, which likely means some new price competition among cholesterol drugs -- which is not to say there should be no patents in the first place, since they make possible the profits that spur innovation making tomorrow's "me-too" drugs and generic imitations possible.)
The Times may need a complimentary copy of ACSH's Good Stories, Bad Science: A Guide for Journalists to the Health Claims of "Consumer Activist" Groups. You can download a free copy.
Jeff Stier, Esq., is an associate director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
