It might be quite enlightening to know that R&D budget
as a pecentage of their advertising and lobbying budgets.

I've been retired for almost ten years, but before I retired, I did a
lot of research on drug marketing. Prime sources of information are
the various investigations of the drug industry conducted by the U.S.
Congress. One especially rich source is "Competitive Problems in the
Drug Industry," an investigation that went on for 20 or 30 years and
produced about a five-foot shelf of documents.

I believe it was in there that it was reported that the top eleven
drug firms spent six percent of sales on research. But they spent 24
percent, four times as much, on advertising and promotion.Only one
percent was spent on quality control.

Most people don't realize that many of the drugs sold under the brand
names of the big firms are in fact manufactured by small "generic"
drug manufacturers like Mylan Pharmaceuticals and Barr Labs.

"Tscottme" reported that:

"In 2002, PhRMA member companies invested an estimated $32 billion on
research to develop new treatments for diseases - an estimated 18.2
percent of domestic sales on R&D - a higher R&D to sales ratio than
any other U.S. industry."

However, I would not trust any such statement by the drug
manufacturers. They have lied to us, and to MDs, so many times in the
past, they have little credibility with anyone who knows their record.

But even if they did spend $32 billion on research, a lot of that was
on finding miniscule "improvements" on existing drugs that would
enable them to extend patent life and charge higher prices. (This is
not my personal opinion, it was the testimony of scientists before the
Congressional comittees.)

Further, $32 billion spent on research is "chickenfeed" if their
profits *after spending that* are ten or fifteen times as much. Year
after year, the drug company are the most profitable, or the second
most profitable, firms in the United States.

vince norris