dpb wrote:
Charlie M. 1958 wrote:
dpb wrote:
Charlie M. 1958 wrote:
DonkeyHody wrote:

Lots of little drug research companies can cook up new cancer drugs in
their laboratories. Only the big drug manufacturers have the
resources to fund the clinical trials necessary to get FDA approval
for a new drug. Sometimes, a new drug will show lots of promise. But
the manufacturer will shelve the drug because it would make their LAST
cancer drug obsolete, and they haven't made enough money from it yet
to recover the cost of getting it to market - unless a competitor is
about to launch a product better than their old one. Meanwhile,
people are dying that could be saved by the new drug. On the one
hand, it looks immoral to put profits ahead of the needs of dying
people. On the other hand, if they couldn't make money, they would go
out of business and no one would be able to fund the studies. Issues
that appear to be black and white seldom are.

In a similar vein, sometimes when researchers are looking for
something like a new cancer drug, they accidentally stumble across
something that shows promise for treating anther, much rarer
condition. If the market for this potential discovery isn't big
enough to warrant the R&D investment, it does not get pursued.

Talk about sending in the black helicopters...

--

Despite how that may have sounded to you, I'm really not a conspiracy
theorist in the least. The problem is so well documented that the the
federal government passed legislation giving incentives to drug
companies to encourage them not to let such discoveries go undeveloped.

Would you believe the FDA;s own website?

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/special/newdrug/orphan.html

Took somewhat out of context, I'll grant...it's a pov thing I guess.
Sure there are things that don't warrant the investment from a purely
economic standpoint. Unless there's some way to support the research
that's a problem no commercial venture can afford (at least
indefinitely). I mistook the intent given the previous, sorry...

--
And I confess that until I did some googling to support what I said, I
didn't realize that quite a bit *has* apparently been done to minimize
the problem.