Critical Analysis on Commerce and Politics in Pharmaceuticals Industry

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Analysis: Commerce and Politics in Pharmaceuticals Industry
Introduction
Clinical trials are very important in the field of science and health. In pharmaceutics, these kinds of research studies involve evaluating the efficacy and side effects of a specific drug to assess if it is an appropriate intervention for a certain case or health condition. The safety and effectiveness are the results that researchers aim to see in a drug being tested for it to be considered worthy of being placed in the market as an intervention drug for public consumption. In this paper, the business and commercial aspects of the pharmaceutical field will be discussed.
Risking the safety of the Community
There is an evident dilemma in drug companies' priorities, fueled by the system that allows this to continue. It is expected that sales are one of the top priorities of a pharmaceutical company. Therefore, the clinical trials must contain mostly positive results with very minimal to no negative impact on the consumer to ensure this. However, this leads to possibly jeopardizing the safety of the public consumers. It is also worth emphasizing that most clinical trials are funded or sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies, which contributes to the questionable research study. Another issue with the safety of the participants and the community is the risks associated with being included in the clinical trials. There are four phases, and, understandably, there are certain risks, especially with trying out interventions that have not been tested on other individuals. Still, the phases of the clinical trials can be improved more if the implementation of phase 4 is imposed rather than it being an option for pharmaceutical companies. Conducting research costs money, which is also why most pharmaceutical companies are already content with the first three phases since it is already sufficient for the drug to be placed and approved on the market. This is already considered the safest among all the phases since there is already more knowledge about how the medication interacts with the human body and other conditions that a patient may have. A possible reform may be done by imposing that phase 4 of clinical trials in drug interventions are required. This will be beneficial because it will include the long-term effectiveness and side effects of the medication. It will also be able to assess the effect of the medication on a more diverse population that will be beneficial to the development of the intervention and the health outcomes of its consumers.
Research Ethics Board Reform
The presence of a research ethics board in clinical trials is ideally an organization that balances the system. It checks the recruitment process of the participants, the presence of informed consent, participant confidentiality, etc. It should be a committee that prioritizes the safety of the participants in the clinical trial, with consideration to the possible risks of the intervention and its applicable benefits to the community. There is an increased number of research ethics boards for health and pharmaceutic research, and it can be either a private or public company. Due to the significant...