2008-09 NORDLANDER LECTURE IN SCIENCE & PUBLIC POLICY
Is now available on CornellCast! Please click on the title below for the link...
"The Future of Medical Care: Can an Industrialized & Marketized HealthCare be Made Universally Available?"
Professor David Healy
North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine
Cardiff University
Modern Medicine took shape at the end of 19th century in opposition to a proprietary drug industry that traded heavily on branded nostrums. The same scientific breakthroughs that gave Medicine its new form underpinned the development of an ethical pharmaceutical industry that in a series of therapeutic breakthroughs in the 1940s raised prospects of free Medical Care.
While the commercial side of the pharmaceutical industry is still on display in advertisements and sponsorships, the 1950s saw the development of controlled trials, guideline processes and Evidence Based Medicine. Behind these ramparts against commercialisation, there is still talk about making medical care universally available.
However, few of the best selling drugs now deliver a medical benefit, none have been shown to be superior to older cheaper alternatives, almost all are associated with a higher death rate than placebo, innovation in drug development is drying up and few if any of those delivering healthcare are able to deploy professional discretion anymore. This lecture will outline a conjunction of patent law and regulatory factors that along with an industrialisation of drug development have made pharmaceutical companies the greatest advocates of evidence based medicine; a conjunction that ensures that efforts to make what now passes as healthcare universally available would be a recipe for economic ruin. |
