There is a pretty good silver lining here for consumers. Most schizophrenia drugs in the past few decades have been around getting rid of side effects (or trading really unpleasant side effects for less unpleasant side effects). Now, some of these side effects were really bad—lactation, insatiable appetite—so I don’t want to completely discount the good that has been done by continuing this research, but really nothing ground-breaking has happened. Risperdal is really about as effective as anything else, it just has different side effects, and the patent has expired on risperdal, so it’s dirt cheap. If the pharmaceutical companies have stopped trying to make incremental advances, they might stop beggaring schizophrenics.
On the other hand, if money has dried up for basic research into schizophrenia too, that would really be a shame. Drug companies not being able to slightly tweak the same drug and make another few billion dollars bothers me less.
There is a pretty good silver lining here for consumers. Most schizophrenia drugs in the past few decades have been around getting rid of side effects (or trading really unpleasant side effects for less unpleasant side effects). Now, some of these side effects were really bad—lactation, insatiable appetite—so I don’t want to completely discount the good that has been done by continuing this research, but really nothing ground-breaking has happened. Risperdal is really about as effective as anything else, it just has different side effects, and the patent has expired on risperdal, so it’s dirt cheap. If the pharmaceutical companies have stopped trying to make incremental advances, they might stop beggaring schizophrenics.
On the other hand, if money has dried up for basic research into schizophrenia too, that would really be a shame. Drug companies not being able to slightly tweak the same drug and make another few billion dollars bothers me less.