What is the governments role in developing new medicines?
A. Both the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the US government’s primary research arm—and the pharmaceutical industry work to advance scientific knowledge and understanding of disease. However, most of the government’s work is concentrated on early research activities that do not lead to specific medicines. For example, of 47 top-selling US medicines examined in an NIH study, only four had been developed in part with technologies created by NIH funding. All the rest were discovered and developed—and funded—by pharmaceutical companies.
