The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7465.577

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Jeff Aronson, reader in clinical pharmacology (jeffrey.aronson@clinpharm.ox.ac.uk)

Oxford

Two sets of statistics summarise the two main preoccupations of this book.

Merrill Goozner

University of California Press, $24.95/£16.95, pp 297 ISBN 0 520 23945 8 Also available as a digital download www.ucpress.edu/

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Firstly, the costs of drug development. The Tufts University Center for the Study of Drug Development calculated that in 2001 the pharmaceutical industry spent $802m (£446m; €663m) per marketed drug, while the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development thought that a new antituberculosis drug could be developed in the public sector for as little as $115m to $240m, conceding that the international …