June 08, 2015
The Washington Post ran a column by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz complaining about drug companies inventing diseases to market their products for unapproved uses. The immediate target is the marketing campaign for testosterone supplements to treat “Low-T.” Low-T comes down to a set of symptoms that are essentially those associated with aging. Aging cannot be treated effectively with testosterone supplements.
While the column calls for more effective regulation from the Food and Drug Administration, the underlying problem are patent monopolies that allow companies to make enormous profits by pushing their drugs for unapproved uses. When a patent monopoly provides such incredible incentives (patent protected drugs can sell for prices that are several thousand percent above the free market price), it is unrealistic to think that government regulation will be effective in changing behavior.
This is like the Soviet Union trying to prevent people from selling blue jeans on the black market. It didn’t work. In the case of patent protected drugs, the incentives are much larger. And, the health costs can be enormous, since the drugs being pushed may actually be harmful.
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