Within days of each other, Pfizer, Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline announced that they will focus on a few therapeutic areas only and abandon others entirely. Pfizer alone will close well over a hundred drug development projects that have reached two-thirds of the way to launch. The programs are deemed to be too risky and not lucrative enough for Big Pharma in the current climate. Society has a real need for the drugs that are no longer going to be developed for, among others, drug-resistant epilepsy, neuropathic and cancer pain, type-2 diabetes, obesity, and schizophrenia. The authors propose a radical response by the U.S. government and the National Institutes of Health to rescue these abandoned projects, and to continue selected programs for drug approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. The investment required is small compared to the Troubled Asset Relief Program bank bail out, but the return on investment in financial terms and in satisfying societal needs makes this proposal attractive.
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机译：彼此之间几天之内，辉瑞，默克和葛兰素史克宣布他们将只专注于一些治疗领域，而完全放弃其他领域。仅辉瑞公司就将关闭一百多个药物开发项目，这些项目已达到启动方式的三分之二。在目前的形势下，这些计划被认为对Big Pharma而言风险太大，利润还不够。社会真正需要的药物将不再用于抗药性癫痫，神经性和癌症性疼痛，2型糖尿病，肥胖症和精神分裂症。作者提议美国政府和美国国立卫生研究院（National Institutes of Health）做出激进的反应，以挽救这些被遗弃的项目，并继续选择美国食品药品管理局和欧洲药品管理局批准的药物计划。与不良资产救助计划的银行纾困相比，所需的投资很小，但是从财务角度和满足社会需求方面的投资回报使该建议具有吸引力。
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