Many drugs in development, very few approvals. A problem requiring regulatory reform.

A report on the state of global health as private and public money floods health coffers. A problem requiring addressing problems with infrastructure, corruption, a lack of market forces (or any other sort of accountability) in most of the world's state-run health systems, and last but not least, the tendency of aid (private or public) to distort the local economy for the good in question.

A case in point, the problems of national health care systems revealed in Canadian piece on the low cost of making drugs--and the high cost of developing them. More lack of accountability (market forces) in national health care systems.

Thailand breaks more patents. Short run over long run--a disaster all around.

A report on global pharma counterfeits. Already illegal, a problem at the enforcement level.

What it all boils down to: Worldwide, there is a rush to legislate results (people need medicine, after all--safe medicine) at the expense of any kind of attention to the market process at beginning, middle, or end. Let's hope it doesn't occur to any of these people that we need food as well as medicine, or we'll lost market forces there, too--the much-complained of distortion of agricultural subsidies being minimal by comparison.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 2:12 PM | Patents, Pharma

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