In the aftermath of the health crisis, Doctor Jean-François Lemoine receives in his series “The Day After” the personalities who matter and who act in the world of health. Today, Professor Jean-Paul Vernant unworthy of the price of certain treatments and the shortages of certain products encountered during the crisis, he points the finger at the responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry.
Professor Jean-Paul Vernant is an angry man. The shortage of certain drugs in the midst of the coronavirus crisis has reinforced the criticisms of which this honorary professor in hematology was already not stingy vis-à-vis the pharmaceutical industry. In his sights for several years, the prices of new drugs that he judges “completely crazy”.
An evil which, according to him, would be getting worse: “Until the 2000s, these prices were sometimes high but set according to the cost of research and development. Today, therapeutic innovations reach astronomical prices which are not justified since the industry no longer does research, this is the domain of public structures, its work is chewed up!”, accuses Professor Vernant who quickly makes the link between the “need for rapid and large profits from an industry financed by American pension funds” and situations of shortage like those that France experienced during the health crisis on curare, anesthesia products, antibiotics and even paracetamol.
“Old drugs are no longer of interest to the pharmaceutical industry”
“Why these shortages? he pretends to wonder before giving his answer. “When the industry wanted to make a lot of money, it moved on to niche productions by creating drugs for a moderate number of patients but which will be very very expensive, Car-T-Cells, immunotherapyetc, but the old drugs that used to cost a reasonable price no longer interest them!”
Professor Jean-Paul Vernant goes further by denouncing what in his view is the other origin of certain shortages, the relocation of drug manufacturing to countries “lower costs and less severe environmental constraints”. “The big laboratories subcontract for the shaping of their products, they no longer even know what is going on upstream”he assures, denouncing a situation in which “marketing authorization holders [autorisation de mise sur le marché, NDLR] don’t even know who produces the active ingredient!”
The obligation for MA holders to have stocks
Words that resonate the day after a health crisis that made Emmanuel Macron say that “health products should no longer depend on the market”. “We have manufacturers in France and in Europe who are able to ensure the production of drugs”assures Jean-Paul Vernant who also intends to take the President of the Republic at his word by putting forward three proposals.
“We must immediately demand from MA holders that they have 4 to 6 months of stocks of finished products, it is necessary to repatriate the manufacture of active ingredients to France and Europe and it would be desirable to create a structure in the framework of a public-private partnership which organizes the production of medicines.”
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