“Me-Too” Products — Friend or Foe?

A second drug-eluting coronary stent. Another drug for erectile dysfunction. A sixth statin (or seventh, counting cerivastatin). Medical journals seem filled with research articles that induce a sense of déjà vu. Readers wonder, “Have I read this paper before?” No, that was a similar study of a similar product.Critics of the pharmaceutical and medical-device industry argue that “me-too” products cause problems for medicine beyond confusion. They assert that these market latecomers often differ trivially from earlier products and that the billions of dollars spent marketing me-too products could be spent in better ways, such as developing orphan drugs for . . .