[BuddyQ]

[ QUOTE ]
your faith in the fundamental goodness of a multi-billion dollar industry is touching, but what do you think the universities and public sector research bodies do? We don't need a bazillion me too drugs and armies of reps swamping medics with misleading information and billions wasted on advertising. Public sector medical research is far more valuable and a lot cheaper. The major medical journals won't even publish industry funded "research" any more unless the authors had certain contractual arrangements in place to safeguard the scientific integrity (rare to date). It's ridiculous to suggest that they don't lie, cheat and put peoples' lives at risk because they demonstrably do. That's why most countries are putting better systems in place to catch them at it and examine the true value of treatments instead of relying on information the companies stick on the advertising leaflets.

[/ QUOTE ]
Competition in a free market motivated by profit drives innovation, efficiency and discovery. (also creates wealth but that is another topic) I know European socialists frown on such things, then again you have no problem in gobbing up the latest in medical advances, mainly coming from the US.

Had medicine been always left up to the prerogative of government collectives, we would still be using leaches to cure 'the vapors.'