Okay, maybe that headline is a bit over the top. But, this article seems to suggest that drug companies are far, far more interested in selling their product than actually making products that work better.

..according to a study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, contrary to the industry’s claim.

A greater degree of specificity is added later in the article:

..regardless of its purpose of helping people it is a business and thus it has to make money and the way of making money is by advertising more and researching less. The researchers’ estimate is based on the systematic collection of data directly from the industry and doctors during 2004, which shows the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion.

I suppose this isn’t any sort of incredible revelation.. just some hard numbers behind things that already seemed to be true. After all, it is antithetical to the capitalistic purposes of the industry to put itself out of business or to simply give itself less business.

I would hazard to guess that if all primetime commercial advertisements were totaled up, the commercials featuring drugs would likely be one of the highest numbers..

Unfortunately, this has led to an over-medicated country that is more interested in intervention and symptom treatment than prevention and core health issues.

Is there some productive way to take the power away from Big Pharma? I simply don’t know the answer to that question.