The price of pharmaceutical drugs has been increasing tremendously over the years, and as a result, people of all ages are becoming concerned about the costs of medical care -- including Penn engineers and scientists.
Thursday in Levine Hall, the National Academy of Engineering hosted the Mid-Atlantic Regional Symposium, entitled "Engineering in Medicine: from Genome to Bedside," in which members of the NAE and Penn students and faculty discussed the future of medical care.
The four-hour symposium provided an in-depth analysis of developments and discoveries in the medical field, linking both engineering and science at Penn.
Two different sessions were held during the day, discussing topics ranging from "How to Build a Brain" to "Machine Learning from Biomedical Data."
Ultimately, the event concluded with a forum featuring six panelists, who all joined together to discuss the topic "Drug Discovery: Promises and Issues."
The panel, which was led by Bioengineering Chairman Daniel Hammer, began with an initial question proposed for discussion.
He asked the panelists to discuss the "costs of medical care delivery [and] pharmaceutical development from the beginning creation of a drug" and the issues surrounding what different countries believe drug costs should be.
Roy Vagelos, the retired chairman of the board of Merck and Co. and retired chairman of the University Board of Trustees, opened up the discussion.
"That's such a complicated question," Vagelos said. "These are hot buttons for me, and since I'm out of the industry, I can talk about it -- otherwise I'd be killed."
To emphasize what he called the outrageous pricing systems, Vagelos began by describing a new drug to treat cancer that costs $40,000 per year "but doesn't extend life," Vagelos said. "Initial pricing has gone out of hand."
In addition to cancer treatment, Vagelos noted that river blindness, which impacts 35 million people, and elephantiasis, which affects 25 million people, are also "treated with a tiny pill that [is] unaffordable."
Baruch Blumberg, the associate chairman of the Fox Chase Cancer Center, added to Vagelos' drug descriptions by introducing the topic of vaccines.
Unlike most medical treatments, Blumberg explained, "vaccines are given one time in a single dose, so they are not the kind of drugs that make companies lots of money. [As a result,] competition has driven prices down" instead of up like other drug prices.
Consequently, governments have taken over control of the administering of vaccines to ensure safe and effective medical treatment procedures.
Biology professor David Roos also added that infectious disease drugs continue to be a controversial topic as well.
"If you go to a company like Merck," Roos said, "and ask for help with making a drug for malaria, it's quite an undertaking. [Still,] with developments in engineering like robotics and genomic developments," it may be possible.
Until these developments are possible, people will continue to be "blind a lot of the time with debates about drugs," said Arthur Caplan, Bioethics professor and chairman of the Medical Ethics Department.
Caplan explained that one of the issues surrounding drug prices is the fact that the United States is one of the few places without price controls. The reason that the United States increases the prices of medications, then, "is protectionism, not safety."
It is these protection issues that may prevent Americans from obtaining drugs from other countries. Nevertheless, "everyone knows you can go to a Canadian pharmacy and not die," Caplan added.
Due to this lack of price controls, Vagelos' dream "is that one day, there will be a super drug ... one price for the drug everywhere -- you want the drug, you pay the price."
While there is not a single answer to these rising medical costs, Caplan jokingly noted that in the meantime, "the best way we can control prices is to provide people with a pill cutter."
