Deploying drugs for new purposes holds great promise
Pharma firms and governments should both make it easier
BIG PHARMA is under fire. This week the bosses of seven large drug firms were hauled before the United States Congress to answer pointed questions about the cost of their medicines. The hearings come amid rising bipartisan anger about high drug prices. New laws are threatened (see article). Concerns about the affordability of medicines are not peculiar to America; they are global. In Britain the price of a new drug for cystic fibrosis has provoked fury, as has the government’s refusal to pay it. Italy is calling for the World Health Organisation to bring greater transparency to the cost of making drugs and the prices charged for them.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Resurrection”
From the March 2nd 2019 edition
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