The article on "innovation crisis myth", replete with its low estimates for drug development costs, that appeared in last weeks British Journal of Medicine sparked more than a little commentary from various quarters. As an emotional issue, this one resonates well.
Here is Derek Lowe's post on this In the Pipeline as well as today's response from the BMJ articles co-author Donald Light. Derek is a vocal critic of the low ball drug development cost estimates. Dr. Light, as is his wont, sticks to his guns and repeats his claimed cost of $43 M for the "net, median corporate cost of Development".
You can read both their points and decide who you think is closer to correct. Despite the heavy qualification of what Dr. Light's figure purportedly represents, I still think he is way low (by a factor of 10). Though he likely is also correct about the $1.3 B industry figure as being grandly inflated -- which of course leads to a ripe ground for controversy.
PhRMA also has a dog in this fight so I will link to their statement on the debate as well as comments from PharmTech Talk.
Posted by Bruce Lehr Aug 13th 2012.
Comments