STRASBOURG, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Swiss socialist rapporteur Liliane Maury-Pasquier insisted there must be more transparency on the part of the pharmaceutical industry regarding its research and development costs.
Maury-Pasquier made the comment at the ongoing plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) here Tuesday where parliamentarians voted for a resolution calling on the pharmaceutical industry to "respond better to the needs of public health."
"The balance which must be found between the private interests of the industry and those of public health" requires "an absolute transparence on the real costs of research and development" as well as a reconsideration of the patent system, Maury-Pasquier said.
Maury-Pasquier authored a report for PACE titled "Public health and the interests of the pharmaceutical industry: how to guarantee the primacy of public health interests."
Speaking to Xinhua, Maury-Pasquier said: "For several years, we have observed the price of medicines soaring. Between 2000 and 2009, public spending on medication raised 76 percent on average in the European Union and the increase in spending on patented medication went beyond the savings made through the promotion of the use of generic medications."
"Despite the increase in the number of new medications put on the market, there are still very few which offer a real therapeutic advantage and which respond to real health needs," she continued. The exorbitant price of cancer-fighting medications and especially for Hepatitis C "is particularly worrying," underlined Maury-Pasquier.
According to Maury-Pasquier, there has been an increase in the number of people who are speaking out against the innovation model based on patents, saying it isn't optimal for public health. "It certainly produces the highest return on investment, but not necessarily the medications of which society has the most need," explained the rapporteur.
A recent example was made public ten days ago in the United States, where the price of Daraprim, a medication for HIV patients, was increased by 5550 percent in a single night. Turing Pharmaceuticals, after having acquired the rights to Daraprim, decided to raise the medication's price from 13.50 U.S. dollars to 750 U.S. dollars even though its production costs are less than 1 U.S. dollar, provoking indignation, notably from U.S. presidential candidate Hilary Clinton.
The CEO and founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, attempted to justify the price hike by saying the new revenues generated from the medication would serve to advance research for better treatments. His argument echoes those found throughout the pharmaceutical industry, and which convince fewer and fewer health professionals, as well as public opinion, judging from the public backlash against Turing and Shkreli, Maury-Pasquier said.
"The major argument of these companies to defend higher prices is the cost of research and development (R&D), a very risky operation since, of ten thousand molecules tested, only one will reach the market. Nevertheless, the cost of R&D is a very controversial subject, not only because it is never revealed in detail and that it is impossible to verify with exactitude, but also often because it doesn't take into account public financing," argued Maury-Pasquier.
For this reason, the PACE assembly judged that European governments should impose on the pharmaceutical companies "an absolute transparence on the real costs of research and development" and adopt a more strict policy on the authorization of medications put on the market.
"It isn't about making the pharmaceutical industry a black sheep," clarified the Swiss parliamentarian.
Indeed, the PACE resolution said the industry was "one of the key players in the health field and at the very same time a very important sector of activity in many countries." However, "despite the considerable progress in preventing and dealing with conflicts of interest, this is still largely a matter of hit-and-miss," it found.
Maury-Pasquier echoed this: "Some progress has been made, but we must go further. The World Health Organization (WHO), with which we are in contact, has a major role to play. Awareness on the part of politicians, experts, citizens and media is all the more necessary that public health systems are dangerously put at risk by the spike in costs of medications."
In its resolution, PACE also invited member states to forbid any agreement between pharmaceutical companies "which aims to delay, for no medical justification, the marketing of generic medications" and called on them to "impose dissuasive penalties for any illegal practices carried out by pharmaceutical companies, where appropriate, by imposing fines of a given percentage of their turnover."
"In 2014, the Italian authority on competition inflicted on two Swiss pharmaceutical groups, Novartis and Roche, a fine of 182.5 million euros (204.6 million U.S. dollars) for having tried to block the use of an oncological treatment, Avastin, used to treat a serious ocular disease," said a Swiss parliamentarian.
