Efficacy testing doesn’t appear to do much good Come again, it's not important that any medication performs as advertised?! The purpose of Phase II testing is

Efficacy testing doesn’t appear to do much good Come again, it's not important that any medication performs as advertised?! The purpose of Phase II testing is to determine if the new compound is better than placebo; the success rate is ~ 30 %, 70 % are no better than placebo. 70 % of candidates are as good as taking nothing at all. In a public health system this is the most important question to be answered: does the new treatment offer a greater benefit to patients - if not you can't ask the public purse to pay for it. I can also see the risk of backlash - the public perception of bigpharma is already low; if it begins to offer expensive treatments of low value trust in the institutions will erode further.