US pharma slammed over marketing vs R&D

A new study from Families USA claims that, of the nine pharmaceuticalcompanies making the USA's 50 top-selling drugs, eight spent more than twice as much on advertising, marketing and administration last year as they did on their R&D.

Moreover, six of the companies devoted more of their revenues to profit than to R&D, says the report, which analyzed financial disclosures to the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Pfizer, Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pharmacia, Abbott, American Home Products, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough and Allergan.

Families USA executive director Ron Pollack is quoted as saying that drug companies which are "charging skyrocketing prices like to sugarcoat the pain by saying those prices are needed for R&D." The industry is "hiding behind R&D as a way of increasing prices and therefore increasing profits," he said, adding that the R&D "mantra they use is clearly extremely misleading."