According to experts, there is a crisis situation for the pharmaceutical industry as when companies develop new drugs, they get rewarded and these drugs are those that have few clinical advantages over existing ones.

Professor Donald Light from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Joel Lexchin from York University in Toronto feel that seeing this, innovation has been affected for about 50 years.

There have been reviews that claim considerable harms as compared to benefits by about 85 and 90 per cent of all new drugs developed over the past five decades and these reviews have been pointed out.

They also added that finding breakthrough drugs do not get most funds meant for research as they mostly are meant for developing scores of minor variations that are able to generate steady stream of profits. They further added that about 80 per cent of a nation's drug spending goes into heavy promotion of these drugs.

The duo said, "Companies exaggerate research and development costs to lobby for more protection from free market competition. Yet, according to an independent analysis, the 1.3 per cent of revenues devoted to discovering new molecules compares with an estimated 25 per cent spent on promotion."