In 2020, Seven of the Ten Biggest Drugmakers Spent More on Marketing Than on Developing New Drugs
A new Cochrane review by a team from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States examines the relationship between pharmaceutical promotion and what doctors prescribe. The authors' blunt version of the finding: if your doctor has been influenced by messages, payments or gifts from drug companies, it is unlikely you will get options chosen on evidence, safety, affordability and your own circumstances. The scale behind that worry is documented in the same research. In 2020, seven of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies globally spent more on marketing than on developing new drugs. Whatever else that money buys, it buys a place in the conversation that happens before the prescription is written.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The number that stays with me is the mid-2010s US figure: just under US$30 billion a year aimed at convincing doctors. That is not a bribe budget so much as an attention budget — who gets to frame the menu of options.
Fair, but the review is about a relationship between promotion and prescribing, not a proven single mechanism. The interesting question is which channels do the work: free samples, journal advertising, sponsored talks, or the rep at the door.