Donald W. Light

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Selected Works

GOOD PHARMA

GOOD PHARMA: the Public Health Model of the Mario Negri Institute

Describes how a large institute (51 labs) devoted to developing better medicines for patients provides a public health model works without patenting any of its discoveries or new uses in an open-science, collaborative, self-critical style at much lower costs with data transparency than commercialized research.

PHARMAMYTHS AND REALITIES

A Trio of Short Critiques of the FDA

1. "The FDA's new clothes (for safer drugs): tattered, missing sleeve, torn pocket...
2. "Why do cancer drugs get such an easy ride? Many trials allowed that lack basic features for clear evidence of benefits or harms.

3. "Serious risks for few new benefits from FDA-approved drugs" That's what the FDA gives us.

Serious Risks and Few Benefits from FDA-Approved Drugs

The Risk Proliferation Syndrome behind Prescription Drugs

Pulls together the syndrome of practices, laws, and rules that are maximizing harmful side effects from new drugs that usually provide few or no off-setting benefits.
Presents evidence of an epidemic of adverse reactions that have made prescription drugs the 4th leading cause of death, tied with stroke.

"Why do cancer drugs get such an easy ride?"

Rushed approvals result in a poor deal for both patients and cancer research. While regulators claim they approve major advances, independent evidence documents flawed, biased, and incomplete evidence so that no one can know if most help cancer patients. Accelerated reviews and easy-ride quasi-evidence reward more research for more drugs with little evidence of benefit.

Epidemic of Adverse Side-effects

Although prescription drugs are a major health hazard and leading cause of death, sociologists and epidemiologists fail to mention or study them.

Review of Deadly Medicines And Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare By Peter C. Gøtzsche

Describes this readable, deeply researched book by one of Europe's authorities on evidence about the effectiveness and risks of new drugs.

Institutional Corruption and the Myth of Safe, Effective Drugs

Explains how the FDA has become institutionally corrupt so that 90 percent of new approvals provide few or no advantages, and drugs are the 4th leading cause of death.

"MARKET SPIRAL PRICING OF CANCER DRUGS"

Companies are spiraling up high prices, not because of costs or better value, but because they can get away with it, only the USA.

The Myth of Safe & Effective Drugs (2013)

Review of evidence that only 1 in 10 new drugs has substantial clinical advantages but 1 in every 5 results in serious harms.

Health Affairs review of PHARMAGEDDON

Insights in to how drug companies have been transforming illness, diagnosis, the role of doctors, and treatment, away from clinical pathology to risks by numbers.

Wasting money on marginally better new drugs

BMJ "Pharmaceutical R&D: What do we get for all that money?"

High prices and little added value characterize most new drugs. The industry turns out articles on the so-called innovation crisis but we prove there is none. Rather, a hidden business model leads to scores of minor variations.

Data Exclusivity with no benefits

A detailed account of extending data exclusivity without credible evidence it increases innovation. A costly protection from free-market competition

Pharm R&D - Costly Myths

Recent record-high cost estimates of R&D are not only untrue but can impede policy for global health justice

THE RISKS OF PRESCRIPTION DRUGS (click)

Prescription drugs are less effective and more dangerous than patients or physicians think

Demythologizing the High Costs of Drug Research

Cost of research per new drug is much lower than claimed

"The Inverse Benefit Law"

How drug marketing undermines patient safety and public health

"Foreign Free Riders drive up US drug Prices" - myth

Provides evidence that research and other costs are recovered at European prices. Higher US drugs prices go largely to more marketing and profits.

Harvard Professors Violate Ethical Standards

Three Harvard professors violated nearly every standard when we questioned the Tufts-DiMasi high estimate of R&D costs.

Commercial influence on Medical Journal Editors

While medical journal editors work hard to minimize commercial bias in research articles that can threaten their reputation and trustworthiness, editors need to consider commercial influences on themselves, like revenues from reprints of positive results and advertising. These could be significantly reduced.

Global Drug Discovery: Europe is Ahead,” Health Affairs – web exclusive

The Foreign Free Rider claim is a myth. Dollar for dollar, Europeans have discovered more global new drugs than Americans

Basic research funds to discover important new drugs: Who contributes how much? (click)

84% of all funds to discover new drugs comes from public sources

GLOBAL JUSTICE AND VACCINES FOR THE POOR

Estimated Costs of R&D for Rotavirus Vaccines

Costs much lower than claimed and recovered in 18 months; so price can be low & profitable.

Saving the AMC - and GAVI

The pneumococcal AMC needs changes to avoid sinking GAVI

ADVANCED MARKET COMMITMENTS: CURRENT REALITIES AND ALTERNATE APPROACHES. (click)

The only history of this global policy tool and why we need to use open design to do it better.

Is the G8 putting profits before the world’s poorest children? (click)

Two-thirds of $1.5 bn donated by taxpayers will go to extra profits rather than to saving poor children if the pneumococcal AMC is used

Making Practical Markets for Vaccines

Advanced Market Commitments to encourage new vaccines for the poor are impractical, too expensive, and benefit the Big Four more than poor children

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