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Research
Costs:
Research is expensive. During the late 1990s the NIH often spent
more than $130,000 per year to fund an average research project.
Drug manufacturers estimate that they spend an average of $359 million
to develop one new drug.
The
availability of funding often determines what medical research is
conducted. Voluntary health organizations and other groups act as
advocates in urging or lobbying the government to spend more on
their own particular disease. Governments in developed countries
usually spend most heavily on diseases that affect their own citizens,
and these diseases are typically different than those commonly found
in developing countries. Pharmaceutical companies also emphasize
development of the most profitable new drugs, usually for diseases
that occur in developed countries.
As
a result, little research is done on diseases that kill millions
of people in developing nations. In 1998, for instance, the NIH
planned to spend only $116 million on malaria and other tropical
diseases. While rare in industrialized nations with developed health
care programs, malaria kills 1.5 million to 2.7 million people in
developing countries each year.
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