U.S. pharmaceutical companies have become "commercialization organizations, with declining research on new products," asserts biotech executive Pravin Chaturvedi in this contributed article for Mass High Tech. Being publicly-held companies, Chaturvedi says, Big Pharma feels pressure to produce blockbuster lifestyle-enhancer drugs (like Viagra or Lipitor) rather than churning out less-profitable drugs that might help treat or cure diseases. Meanwhile, insurance costs skyrocket and people suffer.
The alternative: tapping life-science talent in India and China:
As the availability of skilled industrial R&D talent diminishes in the U.S. and Europe, there appears to be an increasing availability of skilled pharma and biotech R&D specialists in China and India that can be integrated into the R&D value chain to discover and develop new therapeutic products.
For starters, the U.S. will need to relax its H-1B visa rules. Any other ideas?
Big pharma has dug a pretty deep R&D hole to try and clime out of, and they are certainly not going to clime out themselves. Just like all the other bad situations such as lawsuits from side affects, misleading marketing, and FDA drug approvals, big pharma will buy its way out.
Posted by: foreign online pharmacies | October 25, 2007 at 11:11 AM
... with some help from Congress, media and others on the payroll, yes...
Posted by: Sam Whitmore | October 26, 2007 at 04:26 AM