age of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. This was a designed more to control the promotion and marketing of bad foods rather than bad drugs. It came as a result of the exposure of the appalling unsanitary conditions in the Chicago Stockyard in a book by Upton Sinclair called The Jungle. The second of the three movements was the passage of the 1938 Amendment. This came as a result of a drug called Sulfanilamide, which was mixed with DI-ethylene glycol (sometimes called anti-freeze). It killed more than 100 people. Government stepped in very quickly, and, with this new act, recquired the manufacturer of any new drug to present convincing evidence to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that the product was relatively safe for use before it was put on the market.The final move was the 1962 Kefuaver- Harris Amendment, which tightened safety requirements and also recquired the manufacturers to provide FDA with evidence that the drug was both safe and effective for its intended clinical purpose. People of the drug industry were outraged because this would delay, often by many years, the time and cost of which a company could market a new product and begin to recoup its investment.2The drug industry has severely attacked government, feeling that they are too restricted and that government has no right to interfere because it is getting in the way of production and prolongs the research time for each product that they put onto the market. This extension of research and prolonging of time spent on certain drugs, according to the drug companies, is one of the main reasons for high prices.Economic Factors and Doctor’s Role in ChoiceThe possession of market power by a firm in a particular market means that the firm can behave in a manner different from the behavior that a competitive market would enforce on a firm facing similar cost and demand considerations. The most pointed evidence that large firms in the drug industry possess m...
