Understanding the Trade-offs in Drug Development: Retrospective on Lessons from the Early Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Using COVID-19 as the backdrop, this article investigates different trade-offs in terms of pecuniary and time costs in drug development across different branches of medicine. South Asian countries as well as China have a rich history of practicing traditional and alternative medicine. However, modern biomedicine as well as traditional medicine comes with certain procedural requirements, which make immediate responses to a pandemic difficult. Clinical trials in biomedicine are costly, mostly in terms of time. On the other hand, a lack of these standards, as in the case of many alternative medicines, does not come with the promise of low-cost cures for the viral pandemic. Any modification of the standards in pharmaceutical testing has resulted in avoidable controversies at all stages of drug discovery, be it in research papers, or in clinical trials, or in the sale of actual medicine itself. Non-pharmaceutical intervention, with different economic impacts, becomes imperative.