The extent to which a medication is profitable to the manufacturer depends on how many people need it, how often they need to use it, and how long they will need it. From the point of view of the company, a very widespread ailment represents an opportunity for big sales and therefore big profits. But equally important is the number of times a patient needs to be medicated. Consider a product that cures a very serious disease with a single dose. That sounds great! And it is great--for the patient. But, unless they could charge a truly huge amount for each dose (which they often can), it will not be a big moneymaker, unless the ailment is of epidemic proportions, affecting many tens, or even hundreds, of millions of people [2].
An ideal situation from the point of view of a pharmaceutical company would be a very widespread, incurable, chronic disease that is painful, disabling, or life threatening, for which the company has a patented medication that, when taken daily, staves off pain, disability, and death, but does not cure the disease. Such a product provides the company with a large, steady, income flow.
In general, the important parameters of a potentially profitable disease are the number of inflicted people, and the extent to which the disease is curable, life threatening, disabling, or painful (perhaps disfiguring). A medication is potentially profitable to the extent that it alleviates pain and disability, and keeps patients alive. Ability to cure a disease promptly is useful in that it may promote immediate sales, but is detrimental in that it does not lead to long sequences of purchases. The ideal medication is one that must be taken daily, for life, to alleviate the systems of a chronic, incurable, life-threatening disease. Medications for treating diabetes, are prime examples in this category.
In 2011, sales of Pfizer's Lipitor, used to lower cholesterol counts, totaled about $12.5 billion. There were about 30 other pharmaceutical "blockbuster" products with annual sales exceeding $1 billion that year. [3][4]
High prices can be charged for all these drugs because they are protected by active patents. Soon after patents expire, other manufacturers start producing and selling the products for much lower prices. The original producers often attempt to develop and sell newly patented variations, promoting them as "improved" versions.
Harmful side effects
A medication that has immediate, obvious, harmful side effects, such as pain, damage to organs, or death, affecting a substantial proportion of users is not going to sell well (unless it can cure, or alleviate, some serious illness, and all other medications that can do this have drawbacks at least as bad). Where harmful side effects are manifested only after years after use, and affect only a small fraction of users, the effect on sales is generally very small. This seems to be true even when the absolute number of people harmed is quite large, which might be the case where there are hundreds of millions of users.
Now consider a new pharmaceutical product. If there are no immediate ill effects, and no clear evidence indicating, with near certainty, that there are ill effects that will be manifested only years later, there will seldom be a problem in getting FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval, and companies will not hesitate to market the product.
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