Dying for drugs

Editor—Aronson's review of the television programme Dying for Drugs shows that the relation between medicine and drug companies is multifaceted.¹ As a clinician you cannot practise without them, but at times you want to get rid of them for being unfaithful to your patients.

With the current academic underfunding of the biological and medical sciences in the United Kingdom, the role of large drug companies cannot be underestimated. They provide a basis for both basic and developmental research that many universities and research medical charities cannot provide or sustain financially.

All drug companies, however, have a moral obligation throughout the various developmental stages of any one product, particularly in the conduct of clinical trials, for the benefit of patients and doctors alike. Although the financial cost of drug development is huge, many companies have acquired vast profits from selling their drugs, especially retroviral agents for HIV infection, to the developed world over the past decade.

Such profits have been forwarded too slowly to the developing world, where successive health crises have occurred over the past three decades, exacerbated by famine, conflict, and economic mismanagement. The reduction of costs for essential drugs in the developing world must be a priority for these companies and part of a moral contract between them and the people who their drugs may help.

If doctors can swear a Hippocratic oath to help patients to their best ability, why can't drug companies follow the same basic principles globally?