Ben Zycher and colleagues investigated whether new and improved medicines are the fruit of research financed or conducted by public agencies, the National Institutes of Health foremost among them, or by the pharmaceutical companies that produce and market the drugs.

The authors investigated 35 important drugs currently being prescribed and found that the scientific contributions of the private sector were crucial for the discovery and/or development of virtually all of them.

Private-sector research was responsible for central advances in basic science for seven, in applied science for 34, and in the development of drugs yielding improved clinical performance or manufacturing processes for 28.

In short, all or almost all of the drugs and drug classes examined in this study would not have been developed -- or their development would have been delayed significantly -- in the absence of the scientific or technical contributions of the pharmaceutical firms.