Why Hasn’t an Effective, Side Effect-free Anti-epileptic Drug Been Developed?
The reason for the current lack of side effect free anti-epilepsy medications that provide adequate seizure control for every person with epilepsy may have less to do with the limits on modern science or the incapacity of researchers to discover such a cure than with the difficulties inherent in receiving approval for a new anti-epileptic drug, first as an add-on therapy, and later for use as a monotherapy. Despite the fact that international pharmaceutical companies are striving to find safer, more effective treatments for epilepsy that will succeed in the current twenty-five drug marketplace, new drugs are not cascading onto the market because of the high cost of research, development and marketing (more than $150 million per drug).[148] Though it would seem that, because doctors ardently support monotherapy as opposed to polytherapy, new drugs approved for monotherapy would be pouring onto pharmacy shelves, that is not the case. The clinical, procedural, and ethical limitations plac
