( Posted by: Desinie Smith- " I'm just passing this information on. You can read the articles and be your own judge. 
My opinion: I can tell you from personal experience that injectable drugs for MS are costing insurance companies $2,500 approx. per month per patient. These medications have no generics available which allows the pharmaceutical companies to keep their cost high. If the patents on said medications were left to run out, generics could be made and the medication's cost would be able to be brought down considerably. Please take note to the foot notes at the closing of these articles where the authors of the articles sight their numerous sources that they used to compile their facts in which to write the articles. I feel that with the billions ( yes, billions) of dollars that are being made from these medications ( and other medications for other diseases also ) the NMSS and other charities that raise money for research of different diseases ( not just MS) are more likely to give research money to fund the findings of a drug's efficacy than they are to finding a cure. Also, be sure to read the recent articles about the newest studies being done by Biogen/Idec and Elan on Tysabri versus Copaxone and Rebif. Tysabri has already been proven in previous studies to lower relapse rates in Relapsing-Remitting MS by 67% and the other injectable drugs are said to be about half as effective as Tysabri.")
Recently Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the academic physicians who largely determine the market value of prescription drugs. He hasn't had to look very hard.
Take the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital. Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.
To read the rest of the article click here. And here's a similar article which speaks of the same subject.

Labels: Copaxone, Tysabri