But blaming drug companies is too easy a response.

The problem is widespread and not restricted to drug companies.

The fundamental purpose of drug companies is to produce profits for shareholders.

An especially egregious form of corporate special treatment is that afforded to the drug companies.

The bottom line is that, despite industry rhetoric, drug companies are growing less and less innovative.

The recent claim that drug companies spend on average 802 million to bring each new drug to market is based on secret, proprietary data and is wildly inflated.

Big drug companies actually spend relatively little on R D far less than they spend on marketing and administration and even less than what they have left over in profits. In 2002, for example, the top ten American drug companies had sales of 217 billion.

Physicians may feel guilty and fear litigation, drug companies worry about the threat to corporate profits and regulatory agencies must face the question Why was the drug approved in the first place?

Only 10 multinational companies, five of which are United States owned, account for nearly half of global drug sales in some instances, United States companies are the sole manufacturers of certain drugs.

The important issue is not how much drug companies spend on R D, but whether we consumers get our money s worth.

Most drug companies lump marketing and administration together in their annual reports, but one reported that 85 of the total went to marketing.

Penalties for drug companies failure to report and communicate safety information must be increased dramatically if they are to serve as effective deterrents

Now, with drug companies increasingly seeking to develop medications that target particular racial groups, the long taboo subject of racial genetics has reemerged.

Because the poor have so little money to spend, drug companies, under current arrangements, have little incentive to do research on the diseases that afflict them.

Enabling developing nations to access vitally needed pharmaceuticals at rates reasonably close to the cost of production will not put transnational drug companies out of business.

Secondly, drug companies are not going to develop really sophisticated psychoactive drugs. We know that most mental illnesses have a biological component that can be dealt with.

Drug companies often lament that the firms from which they are sourcing innovations do not perform clinical trials to their specifications, forcing them to repeat the work.

The WHO elicited pledges from the world s major drug companies not to exploit international repositories of genetic data for commercial benefit, but this has not satisfied Indonesia.

If the conditions for drug approval and marketing become more severe, pharmaceutical companies will be forced to produce fewer me too drugs and more products of clinical importance.

There is now some pushback on prices, but drug companies are compensating by convincing more people to take more drugs for dubious or exaggerated ailments, thereby increasing volume.

So we need not worry about stifling innovative R D. Drug companies do much less of it than they claim, and what they do they can easily afford.

Compare the 17 profit margin for the top ten American drug companies in 2002 with the median of only 3.1 for all of America s Fortune 500 industries that year.

Members of private military and security companies in Latin America had been found to have been involved in the drug trade, trafficking in persons, extrajudicial killings and money laundering.

Four or five pharmaceutical companies have noticed this, felt that would be interesting drug for the human market, and that's just one of the 30,000 genes that affect our biochemistry.

For American drug companies, this agreement extends the time period during which brand name pharmaceuticals have exclusive access to markets, postponing the entry of generic drugs and thus limiting competition.

Finally, there is the example of politicians like George W. Bush, who enacted a government program that promises comprehensive drug benefits to the elderly and mammoth profits to pharmaceutical companies.

Big companies. Big companies.

If drug companies target diseases that affect only people who are unable to pay high prices for drugs, they cannot expect to cover their research costs, let alone make a profit.

Connections are highlighted between Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the lobbying arm of the largest drug companies in the United States, lobbying groups in Washington D.C., and the Congress.

And what about profits? For many years, drug companies in the United States have had higher profits than any other industry after they ve paid for R D and all their other expenses.

While this system does provide incentives for certain kinds of research by making innovation profitable, it allows drug companies to drive up prices, and the incentives do not necessarily correspond to social returns.

Life insurance companies, drug firms, businesses providing services for the elderly, and investors in retirement real estate would all benefit from increased longevity, while defined benefit pension plans and annuity providers would lose.

As a result, millions of people die every year from diseases for which no new drugs are in the pipeline, while drug companies pour billions into developing cures for erectile dysfunction and baldness.

The infectious diseases Cochrane Group, which are based in Italy, has been trying to get the full data in a usable form out of the drug companies so that they can make a full decision about whether this drug is effective or not, and they've not been able to get that information.

Moreover, companies would have an incentive to produce and distribute drugs at the lowest possible price, because only when the poor could use them would the drug save the greatest possible number of lives.

Hollis and Pogge estimate that about 6 billion a year would be required to enable the Fund to provide a sufficient incentive for drug companies to register products that target the diseases of the poor.

Because ketamine has been available for decades, there is no patent for it, so pharmaceutical companies have little financial incentive to carry out research on the drug and seek approval for its use as an antidepressant.

With particular regard to Afghanistan, mercenaries fell into several categories, including those working for private companies, those in the pay of warlords, and those involved in drug trafficking in the highly lucrative illegal poppy cultivation market.

Publicists could work in large companies as in little companies.

International drug control

Intravenous drug users

Drug demand reduction

Drug demand reduction

International drug control

Female drug addicts