An article in the Glencoe Enterprise recently highlighted the fact that medical innovation and research are enabling many people to live longer, healthier and more productive lives.
In fact, a recent study published in Health Affairs reported that cancer patients are living, on average, three years longer; this increase is attributed in large part to new treatments. In addition, there is a nearly 50 percent decline in heart failure- and heart attack-related deaths since a decade ago. The rate of AIDS deaths has fallen by more than 70 percent since highly active anti-retroviral therapies were developed, and blood pressure medicines have prevented 86,000 premature deaths from cardiovascular disease and avoided 833,000 hospitalizations for heart attack and stroke. Many of these treatments were developed by America's biopharmaceutical research companies.
"American patients often get access to new and better medicines well ahead of patients around the world, and this homegrown innovation not only saves lives, it helps the American economy by employing millions of Americans and pumping billions of dollars into our local and national economies," said Billy Tauzin, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). "A strong, innovative and creative pharmaceutical research and biotechnology sector based in the United States is a real boon to American patients."
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