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Pharmaceutical companies in crisis:
a global phenomenon

Growing numbers of observers, critical of pharmaceutical companies' excesses, are demanding new regulations.

Pharmaceutical companies are relative newcomers in the history of medicine, having only come onto the scene a few decades ago. They were a medical success story from the 1950s to the 1970s, with the marketing of a great many drugs, many of which are still the drugs of choice today. The 1980s and 1990s brought unprecedented commercial and financial successes, but also held disappointments: fewer and fewer medicines offering therapeutic advances, spiralling prices (making drugs inaccessible to countless patients around the world), pharmaceutical companies' stranglehold on drugs data, training and expertise, and medication that was increasingly invading every aspect of health and life. In recent years, this crisis has been the subject of a growing number of critical works, all over the world. These criticisms are increasingly voiced by the "big bosses" of the teaching hospitals, who believe it is time to remind pharmaceutical companies of their raison d'être: new drugs research. Policy makers still have a limited awareness of the depth of the crisis, which is glaringly obvious if only they would pull themselves away a bit from the industry lobby.

©Prescrire October 2005

Source: "Firmes pharmaceutiques : des livres pour comprendre la crise, et s'en sortir" Rev Prescrire 2005 ; 25 (265) : 710.

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