Nevertheless, nearly one-half of the world s major medicines developed in the last two decades came out of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. The runner-up was the United Kingdom with 14 percent. A strong capitalist system drives the innovative process by rewarding risk and studies indicate that there is an inverse relationship between the stringency of a country s price controls and the innovative success of its domestic pharmaceutical industry. We do not have a system of price controls on prescription drugs in the U.S. Canada, on the other hand, has no domestic pharmaceutical industry to speak of and its system of price controls on new drugs is one of the most stringent in the world. Mexico has no pharmaceutical research industry either.
Companies don t fund innovative product research by the sale of drugs to the Mexican population.
What this means for patients needing treatment for a variety of debilitating diseases is that the U.S.-based pharmaceutical industry will continue to add to the 40 medicines approved by the FDA last year and the total of 370 products introduced in the last decade. Studies conducted over the last decade show that health care costs are reduced through prescription drug therapy when the alternative is surgery, hospitalization and extensive follow-up care. While pharmaceutical industry giants like Pfizer and Merck have the financial base to undertake development of several products concurrently, our San Diego biotechs cannot afford such luxury. Many have barely raised the capital required to fund development of a single product. It is a tribute to the strength of our research base here that our local industry now has more than fifty drugs in late stage clinical trials, several of which could become commercial products in the next one to two years.