Drug Companies Spend Almost $60 Billion On Marketing, $30 Billion On Research.

There's an intriguing new study in this week's PLOS Medicine, an online, open-access journal. (The study is here. )It concludes that the pharmaceutical industry spends nearly twice the amount of money on drug marketing and promotion than it does on research and development.

In their analysis of data from two market research companies, IMS and CAM, Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin (York University, Toronto, Canada) found that US drug companies spent US$57.5 billion on promotional activities in 2004, the latest year for which figures were available.

In comparison, the National Science Foundation reported that in 2004 the amount of industrial pharmaceutical research and development (including public funds for industrial research and development) was US$31.5 billion in the United States.

For the last 50 years, say the authors, there has been an ongoing debate as to which image of the drug industry is most accurate. The industry promotes a vision of itself, say the authors, as "research-driven, innovative, and life-saving," but the industry's critics contend that the drug industry is based on "market-driven profiteering."

The study confirms the more cynical view that drug companies are out to profit first, and save lives second. And there's nothing wrong with that.

However, it's a reminder that we must view drug companies with eyes wide open, as we should their relationships with doctors. (An excellent account of the dark side of the relationship between docs and big pharma can be found in Dr. Jerome Kassirer's excellent On the Take.)

Finally, the study calls to mind the sobering power of direct-to-consumer-advertising, which the Government Accountability Office reviewed in 2006. This practice generally prods the public to spend more money on costlier drugs they don't necessarily need, or when a cheaper, generic alternative might be just as effective.