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The Importance of Pharmaceutical Industry in Public Health

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Wilshire Labs
The Importance of Pharmaceutical Industry in Public Health

The pharmaceutical industry in the United States began during the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century when only a handful of small, family-owned firms constructed enormous industrial factories in Philadelphia. Medication had previously been manufactured in the medical laboratories of pharmaceutical firms were pharmacists and physicians formulated and administered medications to healthy and ill patients. These firms supplied the pharmaceutical ingredients necessary for creating new pharmaceuticals products. This manufacturing was done in close collaboration with medical experts who provided their insights and suggestions as to how these products should be formulated and manufactured. Manufacturing of pharmaceuticals products moved slowly until it became an integrated activity in which all areas of the industry participated. By the early twentieth century, the Pharmaceutical Industry controlled more than ninety percent of global pharmaceutical sales.

Prescription drugs constitute the bulk of pharmaceutical products in use today. These include drugs for blood pressure regulation, heart disease, diabetes, acne, asthma, and several others. These products improve the quality of life by reducing the suffering of people suffering from common as well as serious diseases.

Prescription drugs are designed and made to provide relief from the symptoms related to these common ailments. In the US there are approximately eleven million individuals who take prescription medications on a daily basis. The number of individuals using pharmaceuticals products has been increasing dramatically over the past few years. As more people are utilizing prescription drugs, questions are being raised as to whether pharmaceutical companies are having an impact on the rising level of illness in the US. Studies have indicated that there is a strong link between physicians prescribing high-dose antibiotic prescriptions to patients with chronic illnesses. These high-dose antibiotics have been linked to an increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

Currently, there are over two hundred Pharmaceutical Companies in the United States engaged in business activities that deal with the manufacture, development, marketing, distribution, and sale of prescription drugs. Many pharmaceutical companies have received government or regulatory approval to produce, manufacture, market, and distribute pharmaceutical products. The largest manufacturers of prescription drugs are CVS Cosmetology Products, Inc. (parent company of brands like L'Oreal), Shire Biotechnology, Inc., Actonel Corp., GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Aventis, Rymadol, Cepacor, Ltd., Wal-mart Stores Inc., All generics Corp., Actavis Inc., Tylenol Inc., AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Inc., Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Jansport. These companies collectively produce more than the US $60 billion in revenue.

Since the development and production of new drugs is the source of revenue for many pharmaceutical manufacturers, they invest extensively in the research and development of new drugs and in establishing medical partnerships. They create a market for their products through advertising and marketing. They utilize the knowledge and skills of medical and pharmaceutical scientists to investigate the medical possibilities of new products.

In the past, the USPTO has categorized pharmaceutical products as chemical substance products or chemical products. Pharmaceutical products can be further classified as therapeutic drugs and non-therapeutic drugs. Therapeutic drugs are those that are used to cure disease whereas non-therapeutic drugs are those that are used to treat diseases that do not affect the body system. In recent years, biotechnology has become an important part of the pharmaceutical industry because of the development of personalized medicines and the use of genetically altered plants, animals, or microbes for pharmaceutical purposes.

Because of the large number of drugs produced by pharmaceutical research and development facilities, there is a great deal of competition among them. This has led to some pharmaceutical companies reducing the price of prescription drugs. As a result of this competition, pharmaceutical research and development institutions conduct frequent studies to find out the factors that lead to the increase or decrease of the prices of prescription drugs. In order to keep up with the increasing demand, the pharmaceutical industry has introduced several discount schemes in which the producer of a particular drug can produce a limited quantity of a particular drug for a fixed price. Another way to get discounts on pharmaceutical products is to join pharmaceutical discount plans.

With all these advantages, the pharmaceutical industry is enjoying great financial success. However, there is one area that is not well served by the pharmaceutical industry and that is public health. Since many drugs are designed to cure or treat disease, it is obvious that the public would greatly benefit from free access to such drugs rather than paying hefty prices for them.

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