After having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years of my career I am very proud of the work the industry is doing to address #Covid-19 with testing, clinical trials and collaborations to save lives .
[photo credit: Wix stock photos]
In fact, I’ve always been very proud to be a part of the pharmaceutical industry in the years that I worked in it with top companies that were providing life-saving drugs to patients. The work I did acting as a resource to healthcare providers that in turn were able to treat patients more effectively with the drugs I represented gave me great job satisfaction.
However, in recent years the pharmaceutical industry has gotten a very bad rap due to a few bad apples and some practices that were not necessarily in the best interest of the public and the healthcare industry. The problem was that every company was put in the same bucket for the most part and the industry as a whole had been demonized. I always felt this was a tragedy even after having left the industry.
Most people fail to realize and few report on the millions of dollars that many pharma companies give away in the way of FREE drugs to indigent patients. The focus primarily from what I could tell was always on the negative never highlighting the positives in recent years. Research and development is expensive and if you don’t know much about the industry do your homework because the cost of bringing a drug to market from a molecule through all phases of clinical trials is outrageous. The FDA has many rules and regulations as they should for the conduct of clinical trials and approving drugs. However, when I think of the drugs that are developed from the pipelines of many of the major pharmaceutical companies to change peoples lives I am humbled by the work that they do.
Like any other industry, the pharmaceutical industry looks to make a profit and a return on their investment. At times there’s certainly have been highlighted articles showing outrageous increased costs for medications but the pharmaceutical companies are not the only ones to blame. The industry is very complex and there are many players and factors that cause drugs to have fluctuating prices. Generics have changed the playing field and many are unaware of what a generic is vs a branded drug. The generic market is a lifeline to many for affordable versions of branded drugs as it is the same molecule but it has turned the industry upside down over the years.
There are sometimes as many as 10-15 companies producing a generic version of an off patent branded drug. I used to get a generic prescription refilled every 30 days of a previously branded drug and many times it was a different generic version of the original branded drug from a different generic manufacturer with each refill. In this instance with this medication I could tell a difference in the efficacy or at least what I perceived as different based on the fluctuation of the version I would get when I picked up my script at the pharmacy.
To learn more about generics vs branded drugs you may want to check out the link below on an article from thehill.com I thought was very informative.
My hope is that others can more clearly now see how pharma companies have stepped up to challenge the #Covid-19 virus , the importance of the research/ development that top pharmaceutical companies do in this country & the positive impact they bring to maintaining good health in our country and globally.
They may not always get it right but when our lives most depend on it they are there doing the research to find cures and solutions to keep us healthy and stay safe from terrible diseases that kill and or ruin the quality of people’s lives.