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Medical Forum / General / General / June 2005research spending in Canada
Steve I was very curious about the amount of research monies spent by Canada and the U.S. and asked someone. (Not that I disbelieved your estimates of the percentage breakdown. It seemed about right). Here is the response I got from a professor of public health. Zee Data for 2003 (1 Canadian $ = 0.71 US $) World market for pharmaceuticals = about US $466 billion Canadian market = about US $10.7 billion (2.3% of world market) World spending on R&D (by pharmaceutical industry) = about US $61 billion Canadian spending = US $ 0.85 billion (1.4%) Please note that these are reasonably good estimates but may be off a bit. One of the main reasons for the lower Canadian R&D is the fact that there are no multinational pharmaceutical companies based in Canada. Multinationals tend to do their R&D in two places - their home countries and the US (attracted by the large market size, the large number of researchers and the ability to capitalize on the large amount of basic research done by the NIH, currently about US $25 billion per year.). ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The NIH money "currently about $25 billion per year, is public money, is it not? I am not sure how the NIH is funded. Zee >>The NIH money "currently about $25 billion per year, is public money, is it not? I am not sure how the NIH is funded. << COMMENT: It is public money, funded out of the US income tax. As you can see, US pharm research somewhat outpaces public basic biomed R&D, even in the US. Some people have claimed that this means you pay for your medical treatment twice, and there's a seed of truth in that. NIH does fund some studies of drug treatment of still on-patent drugs. Too many, I think. But most of these NIH trials actually compare patented drug A to patented drug B, in a trial which usually neither the makers of A or B would ever fund. Makers of one or the other drug benefit from the results (but not both) and so does the public. Even the non US public. So who SHOULD pay for such trials? The NIH and some other government agents also spend 3% of their money in SBIR grants which go directly to small business to develop biomedical products. But my own experience is that SBIRs don't come close to paying for the government differential regulatory burden on startup biomedical companies, so that's a wash. If the public pays for it, the taxpayer's representatives also pass laws which make it the paperwork nightmare that it is. Most NIH research is basic biomed stuff that has payoffs > 20 years down the road, and which pharma, left to itself, would NEVER do. Business simply cannot be that farsighted in the short patent system the world is saddled with. So the public doesn't pay twice for this research. They pay once. Or rather, the American taxpayer pays once. Much of the rest of the world gets a free ride when they read about it on Medline (a service of MEDLARS at the US National Library of Medicine, which is a part of the NIH). If NIH quit funding basic biomed research, would private industry pick it up? No, there's no reason to think so. Any more than Canadian pharma has picked it up because Canadian basic biomed research lags, not having the great NIH tit to suck on. Instead, Candian drug R&D lags and Candian basic biomed research lags. And Canadian basic biomed researchers just move South to where they can get NIH grant money. Then they publish their research, and Candians read about it on the internet, after looking it up on Medline. All courtesy of the US taxpayer. So it goes. SBH > >>The NIH money "currently about $25 billion per year, is public money, > is it not? I am not sure how the NIH is funded. << [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] > > SBH I get it. Any ideas how this can be redressed. Thank you. Twice. Zee Problem is that there is an ongoing and unresolved ethics issue with the NIH, whereby the drug companies can strongly influence the principal investigators in studies involving their products. Subject of a series of award-winning Los Angeles Times articles and Congressional debates, it is still unresolved. >>>The NIH money "currently about $25 billion per year, is public money, > is it not? I am not sure how the NIH is funded. << [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] > > SBH >>Problem is that there is an ongoing and unresolved ethics issue with the NIH, whereby the drug companies can strongly influence the principal investigators in studies involving their products. << COMMENT: Yep, a scandle. Wherever you get people making multi-billion dollar regulatory decisions, you're going to have bribery. Which is why I've always snorted when people go on and on about doctors and their free coffee cups and pens, due to their control of TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollar of discretionary Rx writing. LOL. First, there are bigger fish to fry, on both public and private side. I've said this before and it bears repeating. Look at who owns the large buildings in the center of your nearest large city. The are the people with the control of your society, and those are the people who the pressure is greatest on, to be corrupted by bribes of one sort or another. Generally not too many doctors and veterinarians and engineers and physicists own those buildings. SBH Oh geez. A coupla cheap pens. Yeah right. How about scuba equipment? And the place to use it? The biggest buildings in my city are hospitals/medical school complexes. One of them downtown. Both, as the excerpt from the New America Foundation journalist's book suggests, are owned (de facto) by pharmaceutical companies. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2138/ But if that doesn't satisfy you...the most garish (big, just a different kinda big) downtown street level office and clinic is owned by a plastic surgeon. For those impulse lap lifts. Zee > >>Problem is that there is an ongoing and unresolved ethics issue with the > NIH, whereby the drug companies can strongly influence the principal [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > > SBH Never seen this publication before. This one rocks. Jesus, is this news? http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2133/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >>Problem is that there is an ongoing and unresolved ethics issue with the > NIH, whereby the drug companies can strongly influence the principal > investigators in studies involving their products. << http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-nih1feb01,1,1055629.story Article on partial resolution of ethics issues, but not full, as of February of this year. "For the last decade, government scientists at the NIH have quietly been allowed to consult for biomedical companies under policies that defenders have said helped attract talented personnel to the agency. Hundreds of scientists took millions of dollars in fees and stock from industry. Most of the payments were hidden from public view, raising questions about the scientists' impartiality in overseeing clinical trials and in making recommendations to doctors for treating patients." Note that there was NO PUBLIC DISCLOSURE of conflict of interest. >>>The NIH money "currently about $25 billion per year, is public money, > is it not? I am not sure how the NIH is funded. << [quoted text clipped - 43 lines] > > SBH |
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