What is the primary purpose of the author?

2014 was a landmark year for drug development. The
US Food and Drug Administration approved 41 new
pharmaceuticals, the most since 1996. Each of these
will hopefully make the world a better place, alleviating
distress and preventing premature deaths. But
developing drugs is incredibly expensive – and
increasingly so. The cost of bringing a new compound to
the market is now around $2.5 billion, twice as much in
real terms as it was a decade ago. One of the costliest
parts is recruiting and retaining volunteers to test the
drug in a clinical trial. Around three quarters of trials are
delayed by problems with this process. Most trials
over-recruit by up to 50 percent to compensate, but the
drop-out is still so high that only 1 in 20 volunteers end
up generating useful data. The result: wasted time,
effort and money. That is not for lack of patient
willingness. In 2013, the UK's House of Commons found
that people want to volunteer but do not know how. Yet,
volunteers can be brought on board and kept there by
making more effort to inform and help them to choose
which trial they would like to enter. The problems with
volunteer recruitment were identified a decade ago but
have not been eradicated. It is high time they were. It is
in everyone's interest to get rid of this unnecessary
waste