Comment by pessimizer
4 hours ago
No. This is what we have government for. The self-interested are the least qualified. They are simultaneously paying to market the drug (which involves exaggerating or lying about its capabilities and minimizing or hiding its drawbacks.)
This certainly seems like something a national health service (or even insurance company) should be doing in its own interest (in order to direct spending), and wouldn't have any intrinsic bias towards any particular outcome other than an accurate one. The problem is that you need a government that is not also owned by the drug company.
In the US we have an enormous amount of government health care spending that would benefit from more knowledge about the effects of these drugs. There's no reason why we should ever take the drug company's word for anything. The research was likely originally done in an academic setting, and likely largely government-funded. The only reason the drug companies get these drugs from that environment is through corruption.
> The Bayh-Dole Act made a key change in federal contracting procedures that allowed contractors the right to retain ownership of inventions made with federal funding.
Agree, in principle, but in the US we are very far from that system, so essentially unrealistic.
And the countries that do have such systems are doing so with US pharma companies cranking out drugs. Presumably if they were fully self-contained that system would be much slower but also generate a higher proportion of medically useful drugs, vs patent-preserving lobbying or other shenanigans.