Discussion on Drugs

The World Today - Effectiveness of prescription drugs under dispute
Tuesday, 9 December , 2003 12:44:41
Reporter: Fran Kelly

TREVOR JONES: It is true to say that not everybody responds the same way to every medicine, in the same ways people have different allergies to foods and so on. But the vast majority of drugs work in certainly over 90 per cent of patients, but there are some categories where we don't know enough yet about the disease to know whether all the patients are going to get the benefit.FRAN KELLY: But according to Allen Roses, the statistics are startling. He says that more than 90 per cent of drugs only work in 30 to 50 per cent of the people taking them. Now, that's a massive failure rate.TREVOR JONES: Yes, I couldn't say that I would agree with him on that subject. I feel that all the data I've got, all the research I've seen is that that figure is different to the one I'm aware of.FRAN KELLY: What is the failure rate as far as you're aware of?TREVOR JONES: Well, for many drugs. I mean, for example, for painkillers they work in certainly well over 80 to 90 per cent of patients, and in those 10 per cent they don't work as well, it doesn't mean they don't work, it means you maybe have to take two tablets rather than one.FRAN KELLY: But the reality is the National Health Service, the NHS drug bill is 7.2 billion pounds a year and rising for drugs that, according to Allen Roses – the Vice President of Genetics with GlaxoSmithKline, don't work on most of the people who take them.TREVOR JONE: Well, let's put that in context again. The drugs bill is a very small component of overall spend on heath here, in fact it's only just over 10 per cent.FRAN KELLY: But it has risen, according to the newspaper – 50 per cent and…TREVOR JONES: It has risen much less than the total spend on national health service.FRAN KELLY: In Australia, and I presume it's the same here, the drug companies do work hard on doctors, particularly to prescribe their drugs.TREVOR JONES: Well, we most certainly believe that the doctor can distinguish between what patients need and what patients must have, and what we do is provide the kind of information to them, both in post-graduate seminars, and of course by representative visits, so they can make their own judgement, patient-by-patient of what's the right drug for that person.

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