"The public system should review all clinical drug trials."

BarcelonaThe scientific community has been warning for years about an increase in diseases such as cancer, heart attacks, Alzheimer's, and obesity in the coming decades. Society is increasingly aging, and many of these rising pathologies are associated with age. Everyone is calling for greater research efforts to better control these diseases, guarantee patient survival, and ensure their quality of life. However, pharmacologist Joan Ramon Laporte and health economist Guillem López Casasnovas emphasize the importance of overseeing this research, especially in the companies behind it.

Under the title The revolution in medicines of the future, Pharmacologist Joan Ramon Laporte and health economist Guillem López Casasnovas reflected this Tuesday evening on the state of health research within the framework of the series of debates organized jointly by the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC) and the ARA (Argentine National Association of Spanish-speaking Countries), moderated by the newspaper's head of Society, Gemma Garr. The experts question whether increasing public healthcare spending on medicines will improve the lives of patients and, if so, to what extent, and how the selection of drugs to be incorporated into the portfolio of services should be made. "No councilor or minister wants to be remembered as the person who denied treatment," Laporte stated, arguing that "the public health system should verify all clinical trials" conducted, since those organized by private companies with vested interests. "We need a pharmacological information system untethered from the industry," he insisted.

López Casasnovas focused on public spending on medicines and made a case for prioritization, as the public health sector must be able to withstand pressure from industry, commerce, and even marketing. The economist cited the United Kingdom as an example, which has a funding threshold of 30,000 pounds per year "for a quality life." What does this mean? If a medicine costs more than this amount, but the effect it generates is less than a year of survival in real life, the recommendation is that the public system not assume the expense. Regarding Catalonia and the rest of Spain, he considered that there is a large expenditure on medicines due to "overconsumption," although he admitted that the dynamics of the countries also favor rising prices and, therefore, so does spending.

For Laporte, "traditional supply and demand does not exist" in this sector: "There is one who sells, however, there are three who buy: the patient, the doctor, and the public health system. The first consumes the drug, but does not choose it and does not pay for it; the second chooses it, but neither consumes it nor pays for it;" Furthermore, both experts have recalled that the difference between efficacy and efficiency lies in the setting in which it is tested: a laboratory is one thing, and the real world is another. In fact, Laporte has pointed out that "the one who designs, plans, carries out, monitors, and interprets the studies" used to approve and market drugs is exclusively the sponsor of the research, that is, the pharmaceutical company that benefits from them.

Discrepancies over vaccination

The debate has heated up regarding the pandemic, specifically vaccination. Laporte questioned the effectiveness of COVID vaccines and asserted that normalcy has returned to normal thanks to the omicron variant, which was supposedly less aggressive than its predecessors. Meanwhile, López Casasnovas praised the professionalism of those responsible for conducting clinical trials, as well as those who, in record time, managed to develop effective vaccines against the pathogen that swept the world five years ago.