PHAR 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Health Canada, Clinical Trial, Observer-Expectancy Effect

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Pharmacology and Toxicology
• Course: PHAR 100
• Professor: Bill Racz

Document Summary

Today a large number of drugs are based on molecular biology techniques ie) receptor agonists (stimulators) and antagonists (inhibitors). Today we can use recombinant dna technology to make compounds biological drugs ie) human insulin. In future drugs will likely be more selective (hopefully will reduce adverse effects from drug interactions) The market is flooded with drugs that maximize profit while offering little or no benefit to healthcare. For every 1$ spent on prescription meds 0. 25$ goes to promotion nearly all of which is used to entice mds. (cid:862)me too drugs(cid:863) copy cat drugs with no real advantage over their counterparts. In 2004; 58$ billion was spent on marketing. While only 32$ billion was spent on actual drug research and development. E(cid:454)a(cid:373)ple: i(cid:374) (cid:1006)(cid:1004)(cid:1004)(cid:1008) the drug (cid:272)o(cid:373)pa(cid:374)(cid:455) (cid:858)pfizer(cid:859) pa(cid:455)ed (cid:1006). (cid:1005) (cid:271)illio(cid:374) $ fi(cid:374)e for pro(cid:373)oti(cid:374)g drugs to ph(cid:455)si(cid:272)ia(cid:374)s without approval.