'1 in 10' new drugs offer better treatment

New research: At most, one in 10 new drugs brought on to the market "represent a major therapeutic advance", according to research findings.

"Studies in Canada and France have shown that new drugs classified as medical breakthroughs vary between 5 and 10 per cent of all new drugs brought to the market," said Joel Lexchin, lecturer in health policy at York University, Toronto, Canada.

"In Canada, new drugs are classified into three categories - new forms of available medicines, drugs which have moderate, little or no therapeutic gain and drugs which have significant therapeutic gain. Year-on-year statistics have shown that 50 per cent of new drugs are new forms of available medication (such as liquid suspension of an existing pill), 45 per cent are classified as having moderate, little or no therapeutic value compared to existing products and five per cent represent a therapeutic advance, i.e. treatment where previously there was no treatment," he said.

Lexchin was addressing a conference on Health, Democracy and the Globalised Pharmaceutical Industry in University College Cork last week.

Although admitting that it was difficult to gain access to such information on new drugs in Europe, John Abraham, professor of sociology and co-director of the Centre for Research in Health and Medicine at the University of Sussex, England, said: "It is fair to say that in Europe, somewhere between five per cent and 20 per cent of new drugs brought to the market are of significant therapeutic gain."

Questioning whether such an abundance of new drugs without "significant therapeutic advance" should be brought to market at all, Charles Medawar, a London-based commentator on medicines policy and drug safety, said: "There is deep confusion in governments as to how to distinguish between the economic value of innovation and the therapeutic value of innovation. Our consumer society values new as better and this is compounded by secrecy surrounding regulatory processes and inadequate estimations of drug benefits and drug risks."

Medawar is co-author of Medicines out of control? antidepressants and the conspiracy of goodwill (Aksant), which examines the safety of medicines and the ethos of pharmaceutical medicine.

'This pattern of drug consumption in the Western World with an emphasis on newness is irrational and unhealthy and is linked to the deprivation of essential drugs in the South," added Medawar. who is the current chairman of lobby group Health Action International.