3 ms·

> The US is responsible for ~40% of the world's output in terms of medical research, which is 10x the country with the second largest amount of output, England.

> The US is responsible for ~40% of the world's output in terms of medical research, which is 10x the country with the second largest amount of output, England. These seem to be academic publications and according to this Quora post [1], it's primarily driven by American universities and research institutes. It is not entirely clear to me how profits within the US would be a major factor here: I would have thought that NIH spending is more important in this context. While it's sort of true that NIH spending is more relevant for the R in medical R&D and industry spending for the D in R&D, the Forbes article seems to be only about peer-reviewed published research. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-countries-have-lead-the-world-in-medical-research-and-innovation-in-the-past-20-years https://www.quora.com/What-countries-have-lead-the-world-in-...

malandrew 10y ago
What percent of new medicines and treatments developed are developed in the UK? How does that compare to the US?
- rbehrends 10y ago
  I don't know, and the UK may not even take a dominant role here (as the commercial research infrastructure is very likely to be different). We'd also have to account for the fact that a lot of drug development goes into drugs that do not provide any novel treatments, but merely exist because somebody wants a share out of a big market (e.g., Viagra alternatives) or to find a replacement drug that can be patented to sell in lieu of a drug where patent protection is running out (which doesn't work too well in countries with reference pricing, but reference pricing is still uncommon in the US, and the US practice of prescription drug advertising doesn't help, either). In any event, if you want to make such a claim, it's up to you to support it. I was merely pointing out that your argument is fairly incomplete as it stands. It doesn't even address the question whether it may be due to economic clustering effects or a superior bioscience infrastructure in America; after all, if selling drugs in the US were so profitable and that was the cause of research, that would also spark research in other countries.

malandrew 10y ago

What percent of new medicines and treatments developed are developed in the UK? How does that compare to the US?

rbehrends 10y ago
I don't know, and the UK may not even take a dominant role here (as the commercial research infrastructure is very likely to be different). We'd also have to account for the fact that a lot of drug development goes into drugs that do not provide any novel treatments, but merely exist because somebody wants a share out of a big market (e.g., Viagra alternatives) or to find a replacement drug that can be patented to sell in lieu of a drug where patent protection is running out (which doesn't work too well in countries with reference pricing, but reference pricing is still uncommon in the US, and the US practice of prescription drug advertising doesn't help, either). In any event, if you want to make such a claim, it's up to you to support it. I was merely pointing out that your argument is fairly incomplete as it stands. It doesn't even address the question whether it may be due to economic clustering effects or a superior bioscience infrastructure in America; after all, if selling drugs in the US were so profitable and that was the cause of research, that would also spark research in other countries.