"Unprecedented" Change, Challenge For Industry

The pharmaceutical industry is in a period of "unprecedented challenge and change," said Alberto Aleotti, president of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Associations, opening the 17th Assembly of the IFPMA in Malmo, Sweden, last week.

In the past, sensible governments have supported the industry's belief that innovation is its most important duty and its ability to innovate should never be compromised, he said. But recently, some important governments have begun to waver in their attitudes and introduced or considered short-term measures which put in doubt the industry's R&D strategy. And they are beginning to say that society should not pay for small advances in medicine (which has been the way of drug innovation, with a few giant steps from time to time) but only for the giant advances.

"Driven by the need to innovate, the industry's time horizon is at least 10-12 years - the average time to develop and market a new product," he noted, "but government horizons will only extend to the next election or even to the next budget, and the destructive effect on R&D investment of short-term measures such as arbitrary price reductions will not be felt until the government of the day is long forgotten."