Redefining Normal - in order to sell drugs

[DavidGrahamJones]

But we can't deny that with out the years of research and money that "big pharma" spends we would all have poorer quality of life.

My wife is a patent agent and deals exclusively with pharmaceutical patent applications. The average drug takes about 3/4 billion pounds (**** keyboard gone U.S. again, what does that?) to get to the market place. So I personally don't have any problems with the cost of drugs. However, one little trick they now seem to employ, apart from changing the meaning of normal (total cholesterol of 6 was fine in 1997), is to change the use. The patent runs out making it cheaper, they find another use for the drug, apply for another patent defining the new use, hey presto, expensive again.

I noted in another thread that statins reduce CVD, when I thought it only reduced cholesterol.