Drug firms 'hyping up medicines' to patients

Drug companies have been accused of conning the public by hyping up medicines with little new to offer while downplaying their side-effects.

An estimated 85 per cent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse, a study released yesterday claimed.

The author of the research delivered a damning attack on "Big Pharma" at a meeting of sociology experts in the United States.

But yesterday drugs industry representatives in the UK dismissed his claims, saying that companies were transparent in revealing the results of their clinical trials and denying any conspiracy.

Professor Donald Light said the pharmaceutical industry was a market in which the seller knew much more than the buyer about the product, and took advantage of this fact.

"Sometimes drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side-effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs' benefits. Then, they spend two to three times more on marketing than on research," said Prof Light, a professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.

Prof Light presented his paper, entitled Pharmaceuticals: A Two-Tier Market for Producing 'Lemons' and Serious Harm at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.