Reflection

The most interesting topic that I am grateful for Professor Joyner to have gone over is on the topic of clinical trials. We always see the commercials promoting medication for various illnesses/diseases but we never take a moment to understand it’s background. There are multiple stages of trials that it must pass through before it is permitted to be advertised for sale. Our professor also explained why medication is so costly. It is because there is so much going into making/approving the pharmaceutical drug. The reasoan why pharmaceutical companies must undergo clinical trials is that every aspect of the drug must be understood before it is available for the public. Unknown potential side effects can be extremely dangerous if left unknown thus explaining why the process is both rigorous and costly. Furthermore, this operation has heightened its regulatory policies in that the trials are becoming costlier and longer. Many pharmaceutical companies, in response to this, aim to cut costs and quicken the wait as much as possible to construct better profit margins. 

This applies to my education in that I am now researching at an oncology lab and an affiliated company studying lung cancer is in the stages of approving their early detection drug. This class subject opened my eyes to the backgrounds of what it takes to approve and begin advertising for a pharmaceutical drug. It highly sparks my interest because the public is not aware of how rigorous this process is. A common misconception is that there are too many drugs available on the market/ being pumped onto shelves but we must understand that each and every one went through intense review processes. This, however, cannot be farther from the truth. The escalating costs and tedious stand by discourages many companies from developing the number of drugs they seek to; the consequence, however, is the limited amount of new drugs on the market for the public.