Strong Medicine
Subtitle: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: September 7, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 152
ISBN-13: 9780691121130
Subjects: Pharmaceutical technology; Public health & preventive medicine; Pharmacy; Drugs; Business/Economics; Research; Business & Economics; Business / Economics / Finance; Nonprofit Organizations & Charities; Infectious Diseases; Economic aspects; Development - Economic Development; Public Policy - Social Services & Welfare; Business & Economics / Economics / Theory; Economics; Political Science and International Relations; Sociology; Vaccines; Economics - Theory; Developing countries
First sentence: After graduating from college, I spent a year teaching high school in a rural area of western Kenya.
Description: "Vaccines offer the best hope for controlling diseases and could dramatically improve health in poor countries. But developers have little incentive to undertake the costly and risky research needed to develop vaccines. This is partly because the potential consumers are poor, but also because governments drive down prices." "In Strong Medicine, Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster offer an innovative yet simple solution to this worldwide problem: "Pull" programs to stimulate research. Here's how such programs would work. Funding agencies would commit to purchase viable vaccines if and when they were developed. This would create the incentives for vaccine developers to produce usable products for these neglected diseases. Private firms, rather than funding agencies, would pick which research strategies to pursue. After purchasing the vaccine, funders could distribute it at little or no cost to the afflicted countries."--BOOK JACKET.