Companies waste many millions going down experimental paths that their competitors have already found to be dead ends… M.I.T. is proposing dead-end drug disclosure, a concept for drug makers to share information about compounds they have tried and shelved, for reasons like toxicity or inefficacy.
5 thoughts on “Should Drug Companies Disclose Their Research Failures?”
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Very interesting. They may need to develop some cooperaive strategies, now that they are going to have more intrusive government breathing down their neck.
Is there an anti trust issue here?
Larry, I would think there would be. The only way to keep people honest is to make the agreement contractual, with penalties for failure to comply.
The fact a given chemical compound has been tried and failed is proprietary information. Communicating failures has the potential to alert competitors about the types of research being undertaken as well as the potential to help rivals avoid costly mistakes.
The answer to your question is “yes.”