On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:06:03 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
On the other hand, the wild
and crazy US drug market is the reason we have the researchers who have
moved here from Germany, France, and the UK, and they've lost them in big
numbers. It's the reason we have tens of thousands of jobs they would like
to have. It's the reason that I, as a medical writer and editor, made around
50% more than I made as a manufacturing writer and editor.
snip
==========
On the other hand, this does not seem to have helped in the last
few years in the generation of actual new products.

Consolidation, consolidation and yet more consolidation, (and the
asset stripping this implies) with evermore planning, planning,
planning seems to have eliminated any innovation (along with most
of their researchers). FWIW -- classifying a cost as a research
expense does not make it a research expense, it's simply "cooking
the books."

Pharmaceutical "profits" in the US now appear to be far more a
function of "who you know' [in the FDA], legal games (for example
preventing the manufacture of generic drugs based on your
lapsed/expired patents) and direct consumer marketing, than what
a company know about pharmacology, research methods, and
biochemistry or how good their product is. {and we call this the
"ethical drug" sector!]


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).