Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> They develop new drugs, often drawing
> on publicly funded basic research (with money in the U.S. coming from
> the National Institutes of Health). They really love to develop new
> versions of old drugs - tweak a molecule, and get a new, patentable,
> more expensive version of Valium or whatever. Then spend a bundle
> marketing the stuff.
>
I think someone may have already pointed out the following: an extremely important kind of research, which drug companies _never_ do, is research into new applications of old medicines. Consider, for example, the great uses that have been found out for aspirin just in the last decade or so. And the medication I take for migraine (Zanaflex) was not developed for migraine -- it was developed for some other illness and its anti-migraine powers accidentally discovered. Under capitalism we will never discover many, perhaps most, of the potential powers of drugs already developed.
I think both Zoloft & Paxil are the kind of meds Doug describes -- they merely tweaked Prozac. Such tweaking can, however, have incidental advantages of its own. I seemed to be allergic to both Prozac & Zoloft, while I was able to take Paxil.
Carrol