mwah!!

And another thought about innovation – to my mind there is one single change that could be made that would change everything. As I understand it, currently all a company has to prove is that its product is better than placebo – it does not have to prove that it's better than existing products.

Require companies to show that their product is better than existing products.

"Better" could be defined either as more therapeutically beneficial without changing the overall impact of the side effect profile, or it could be defined as equally therapeutically beneficial, with a much more benign side effect profile.

I think that would increase innovation.

I keep trying to think of arguments that one might put forward to support not requiring that companies show that their product is better than existing products – aside from pharmaceutical companies arguing on their own behalfs, I mean – I can't think of any – can you?