Viagra: What Cost?

Who paid for the thousands of Viagra that were promotionally distributed throughout the United States? Was it the little boy in India, who is in chronic pain, because his parents cannot afford the pain killers or is it the little girl in Africa, who will die, because her parents cannot afford, the life saving drugs. The cost of medicines, in recent years, seems to of rocketed. Is it that cures are harder to find or that shareholders are harder to please.

At first, I believe, cosmetic drugs, like Viagra or wrinkle removing cream, were a by product in the search of life saving medicines. Now, however, that cosmetic drugs have become big business, are pharmaceutical companies using money they once used developing medicines, for the development of new cosmetic products.

I think that we all understand that research and development in the pharmaceutical industry is expensive, however, pharmaceutical companies must do their best to ensure that these costs are not reflected in the cost of a life saving drug. Allowing most of the expenses, to be added to, the cost of the cosmetic drug.

The United Nations could also play a role in assisting the pharmaceutical companies. I believe that any disease caught on this planet, can be cured on this planet. We just have not found all the cures yet. One of the reasons for this is that rain forests are being destroyed before researchers have an opportunity to look for any, as yet, unknown plants in that area. The UN could introduce International laws that require logging companies to give three years notice, of any area they intend to destroy. The UN, mainly at the expense of the logging company and the host nation, send in Botanists to look for new plants in that area. It is a small step but could relieve the pharmaceutical companies of some of their research costs. Although this would be a short time for the Botanists, if they found just one plant that could produce a new medicine, then it is a start. Who knows, that one plant may hold the cure for AIDS or cancer.

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars, telling us about new prescription drugs that can cure diseases we have not heard of. They urge us to ask our doctors about them. I thought doctors were there to prescribe medicines that they thought could help us. Not prescribe medicines which we think may help us. Surely, it would be cheaper for the pharmaceutical companies just to ensure doctors are made aware of any new drugs available. If they only did that however, they would not receive the extra revenue they do, by making us all hypochondriacs.

Pharmaceuticals have become big business and so the ethics of any company involved in their production must be constantly scrutinized. There are dozens of drugs available for the relief of each of the dozen or so symptoms of the common cold. No company would want to lose these revenues. Has a cure for the common cold, already be found, patented and secured away in the bowels of one of these companies? If so, could it happen again and would we know if it did?