One reason is that many of the patients use five or more medicines per week.
The companies, with their deep pockets, cause many more medicines to be developed than would otherwise exist.
But there are other cases where patients might need even more medicines.
That doesn't mean that merged companies don't sometimes streamline labs and produce more medicines, but too often the exact opposite seems to happen.
Once they have enrolled all those new patients, the HMOs and benefit managers will start exerting more price pressure on the drug companies, forcing them to sell more medicines on the cheap.
"We currently have more than 25 antibody-drug conjugates in our pipeline and hope this promising approach will help us deliver more medicines to fight other cancers in the future, " Barron said in a statement.
Germans stay longer in hospital than almost everyone else, have more x-ray and ultra-sound examinations, swallow more medicines, and visit the doctor more often: researchers say that up to a half of consultations are unnecessary.
The stories of both Orexigen and Intermune beg the same question: is the Food and Drug Administration going to begin feeling more pressure to approve new medicines more quickly?
This is obviously a good thing for patients, if more new medicines are becoming available.
But to win the battle against NCDs in many low- and middle-income countries, we need more than medicines.
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McKinnell predicts more new medicines will reach the market in the next 10 years than in the previous decade.
As more and more important medicines go generic, some have also begun to take for granted the companies, such as ours, that have created those medicines in the first place.
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Only Novartis has brought more new medicines to market.
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At UCSF, the Li Ka Shing Foundation gift will be used to create a worldwide network of researchers and doctors, leadership exchanges between China and the U.S., and forge a program to create more precise medicines.
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There are no more big drugs going off-patent through the end of the decade, he wrote, and new medicines more than support the company's valuation.
The growing demand for health care should be an opportunity for more efficient services and better medicines and procedures at a more affordable cost.
Between 2007 and 2011, more than 80 medicines are expected to face this fate.
Each year, we test more potential new medicines than the rest of the world combined.
Give the FDA powerful sticks and carrots to compel drug companies to test their medicines more thoroughly.
Each year, we test more potential new medicines than the rest of the world combined, and we lead the world in biotechnology patents.
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Eli Lilly's CEO said European nations should pay more for new medicines as he warned that current low prices could threaten innovation in the region.
It remains the most popular psychiatric drug, topping more recently introduced medicines like the sleeping pill Ambien (No. 2) and the antidepressant Lexapro (No. 3).
The wholesalers apparently bought more of the medicines than they needed, and Bristol has said it could take a year to work off the excess inventory.
For one thing, it signals that these companies are finding ways of using these new technologies to make their medicines more effective --making for better odds in getting Food and Drug Administration approval and reducing money wasted testing drugs that won't work in human beings.
Take the case of Baycol, the Bayer (nyse: BAY - news - people ) cholesterol drug that was pulled from the market in August 2001 because it caused potentially deadly muscle and liver side effects, called rhabdomyolysis, more than similar medicines, such as Lipitor and Zocor, do.
In her lengthy letter to Mr Blair, she claims commercially-produced medicines are more harmful than cannabis.
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One in four said they would like pharmacists to provide more information on complementary medicines.
Buying Pharmasset adds two more wholly owned experimental medicines, plus one that is partnered with Roche.
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The fact that the public are thinking more positively about recycling medicines should be welcomed.
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