EU regulator slams drug companies for putting profit before public health

Friday, December 17, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: drug companies, profits, health news

(NaturalNews) The continued emergence of drug-resistant "superbugs" has created an urgent need for either better antibiotics or an entirely new approach to dealing with infectious diseases. But drug companies hardly seem concerned about investigating any solutions to the problem because they can make more money by devoting their time to creating other, more lucrative drugs, says the head of a prominent medical agency.

Thomas Lonngren, soon-retiring chief of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), recently announced that his organization may need to step up and act as "watchdog" for the pharmaceutical industry to prod it to better meet public health needs. According to Lonngren, there is little incentive for drug companies to work towards creating better antibiotics at this time because the sales of such drugs will only be a fraction of what other potential "blockbuster" drugs will likely be.

"We have more or less a gap of five years without research into new antibiotics," explained Lonngren at a recent EMA conference in London. "This is probably one of the biggest health threats in the world today ... it's an issue where commercial consideration doesn't really match the public health need."

Lonngren explained that drug companies have neglected other important areas of research and development (R&D) as well, including the area of central nervous system disorders, again because of inadequate profit expectations. And with a slew of drug patents ready to expire, drug companies are scrambling to rake in a much new profit as possible, by whatever means possible.

Most currently-used antibiotics are steadily becoming completely ineffective. But there are many natural antibiotic alternatives like garlic (https://www.naturalnews.com/029149_antibiotic...), raw honey (https://www.naturalnews.com/021506.html), coconut oil (https://www.naturalnews.com/028139_coconut_oi...) and bee propolis (https://www.naturalnews.com/propolis.html), that will always be safe and effective against harmful pathogens without inciting harmful side effects.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BE5C9...