Drug companies recruitment

It turns out that there is another reason for including a second medication in a clinical trial. You may remember that there is not much difference in effectiveness between one drug and another in the treatment of depression (see Chapter i). So trying to show that the new drug works better is not likely to pay off, and given how expensive clinical trials are and how difficult it can be to recruit subjects for them, a drug company would not want to include an additional arm unless it paid off. So why include it ... 

The pharmaceutical industry has a long tradition of cooperation with academia (415). When World War I eliminated the supply of pharmaceuticals from Germany, American drug companies realized the need to develop their own products. They established ties with universities in order to recruit scientific manpower and to capitalize on academic research with pharmaceutical potential. 

Mosher (1999) warns of an unholy alliance when psychiatrists or other prescribers of medication are recruited by drug companies and persuaded to use a particular type of medication by drug company representatives who offer free services or rewards for prescribing the medica-... 

What a young scientist. Dr. Daniela Salvendni (1996), said of her choice to work for the Searle drug company speaks for many newly recruited and veteran chemical researchers ... 

Figure 1.3 shows the expenses versus revenues for a company s investment in developing a new drug. Up until the clinical stage, the investment is substantial in the discovery and development processes. The largest cash demand is in the clinical trial stages, where hundreds and thousands of human subjects have to be recruited to test the drug. 

From a pharmaceutical company s perspective, the costs of increasing female participation in trials are significantly greater than the odds that an approved drug, tested primarily on male subjects, will be withdrawn by the FDA because of unexpected health effects in women. Therefore, although pharmaceutical companies do not actively dissuade female participation from trials, their recruitment efforts rarely focus on women, and the lack of female participation in most research is not a point of concern. 

Noncompliance creates a ripple effect far beyond the risks associated with civil or criminal prosecution. Insurance companies and potential investors may consider the company with a poor compliance history to be a poor business or investment risk. Employee recruitment and retention can be jeopardized. Public acceptance of the products that eventually are brought to market may be compromised by the bad publicity associated with noncompliance. Most important, drug development can be delayed or derailed as new products are prohibited from being brought to market. 

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