"Not Invented Here" syndrome is a factor in many businesses today. It usually means reluctance to use technology that was developed elsewhere. However, according to some sources, the drug industry has turned the phrase on its head, depending almost exclusively on innovations that were developed elsewhere (including NIH)
In a letter to the Wall Street Journal recently, Harvard Medical School professor (and former NEJM Editor) Dr. Marcia Angell responded critically to Ben Zycher's editorial on the industry's importance to drug development, stating that the industry lacks scientific creativity when it comes to drug development.
An excerpt:
The problem with . . . publicly-funded innovation handed off to the drug companies -- is that the industry expects to be rewarded as though it were the source of innovation, pricing drugs as high as the traffic will bear and doing everything possible to extend its exclusive marketing rights. The only really innovative thing about this industry today is the claims of its apologists.
For more, read on.
How about the ingenuity and cost involved in taking a laboratory concept and processes that produce micrograms of product and transforming them into safe, large-scale manufacturing processes? Is the industry over-compensated for that?
What do you think?
