Putting Medical Research to Work

Make Research Dollars Cout

Dear Representative,

A large percentage of the billions of dollars invested by the nation in medical research is being wasted. Very little medical research ever gets out of the lab: not because it wouldn't save lives, but because the current research and drug development system puts major barriers in the way of applying that research in the real world.

The chain of results produced by medical research usually ends with a publication in a journal: even when that research opens up avenues for producing exciting new cures and capabilities. Putting our huge pool of untapped knowledge to work could be facilitated by a few changes in government policy.

For instance, the barriers to carrying research through to human trials are so draconian and the support for leaping those hurdles is so limited, that most researchers regard the effort as a waste of time. Consequently, they are rewarded for doing research but not for creating cures and new capabilities.

The pharmaceutical companies that might be expected to provide the development side of the R&D equation do not. They evaluate the potential of research not in terms of lives saved or improved performance, but in potential profits. This is why you see a glut of duplicative products for mass application drugs, but relatively little development of less potentially profitable options.

Were policies changed to support the development side of the equation as well as the research side and to change the incentives in the pharmaceutical industry, we could see more productive investment--more money put into development and less into marketing, more products and lower costs, all with the consequence of generating major improvements in the health of people worldwide.

It is clearly imperative that we bring medical costs in this country down. The best in class healthcare systems spend 8% of GDP on healthcare. We spend 16% and rising. America will never be a world-class competitor with such a disadvantage.

The necessary changes in policy could be accomplished in a way that helps bring the cost of pharmaceuticals, the fastest growing cost component in healthcare, down while simultaneously producing better health.

[Your name]