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FEW NEW DRUGS ARE IMPROVEMENTS
WASHINGTON (May 29, 2002) - Only 15 percent of new drugs approved in the
last decade were novel chemicals that the Food and Drug Administration
deemed a significant improvement over older drugs, says a study by the National .
Institute for Health Care Management. The vast majority instead were similar to existing medicines. Yet during the same time, consumer spending on prescription drugs more than doubled to $132 billion - and most of the increase was spent not on the most innovative drugs, but on the less important or copycats (all involving the torture of millions of animals - Ed).
The FDA and other groups have long cautioned that major pharmaceutical
breakthroughs are rare. But this study was among the first to rank spending according to drugs' relative importance to health care.
The findings show patients must be smart consumers, said Institute president Nancy Chockley. "We are all under the impression that 'new and improved' is always much better, yet that's not always true," she said.
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