The $800 Million Pill is open to trenchant criticism of some of its most basic points, but anyone who reads it will find some wonderful material. Merrill Goozner is a member of a small but influential group of journalists who, by training or diligence, have learned enough science and medicine to bridge the gap between science and policy without making fools of themselves. They perform a valuable service, not least because they can write well. Here Goozner effortlessly pulls the reader through some extremely complicated topics. The title refers to a much cited and debated paper by Joseph DiMasi, Ronald Hansen and Henry Grabowski (J. Health Econ. 22, 151-185; 2003). Based on extensive but proprietary industry data, this study concluded that, on average, each drug introduced into the market from 1990 to 2001 involved total costs of US$802 million. This figure takes into account the opportunity costs of capital and the costs of the numerous failures that litter the path of drug development.
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