Vouchers Pros And Cons

In 1980, a drug called lorcainide, was put into a clinical group to be tested. The drug was produced to regulate abnormal, heart rhythms that were seen as harmful to the person who experienced them. How the clinical worked was half of the patients were given the drug lorcainide while the other half were given a placebo. After testing though, the company stopped production of the drug because of commercial reasons, but still medicines, similar to lorcainide, were still being prescribed. Little did anyone know, for about twenty years, the company who produced the medicine lorcainide, hid information about the clinical trial from the public and other pharmaceutical companies. The information that was not released included the fact that nine of

One person, Christopher Jones who actually studies publication bias at a medical school, did a study in 2009 and found out that 32% of the clinical trials that were funded by the FDA that year had hidden information from the final report. However, even though this seems like a problem that could be resolved from getting rid of priority review vouchers; the positive results outweigh the negative ones. Without the use of vouchers in our country and others, no cures would ever be researched because most are too expensive to produce. With the use of vouchers, the AIDS vaccine is now able to be considered possible because it allows for most of the production costs to be taken care of, so the only worries the pharmaceutical companies have are making sure it works correctly. Vouchers not only allow it to be possible to look at cheaper ways to produce these expensive cures, but it also helps out the economy because countries who need these cures buy

In 2012, 11 of the major drug companies in the United States each made a net profit of nearly 85 million dollars. Big pharmaceutical companies have gained too much power these past decades. These companies take it upon themselves to decide what drugs are going to be produced and what information is going to be presented or hidden from the American public. Publication bias and conflict of interests are two of the biggest problems in the pharmaceutical industry. Publication bias occurs when companies take the results from the clinical trials and hide the information that could potentially hurt their chances of getting the new drug passed. A conflict of interest is the most dangerous form of pharmaceutical power there is. When Big Pharma gets involved with an individual doctor or an organization and pays the doctor to refer his or her patients to drugs that, that company produces. Not only is bribing a doctor illegal, most of these drugs that are being prescribed to these patients have missing information from the reports given to the FDA. Conflicting interest is what led to the downfall of Tamiflu, Lorcainide, Glaxosmithkline, and anti-flu medications. Money is essential to our society, but that does not mean citizens of other countries should die because an American company did not see them as