September 11th, 2008
Will biotech change pharma ethics?
Big pharma is continuing to absorb the biotech sector, as the drama over ImClone makes clear.
The pharmaceutical sector is a Wall Street weakling, with many questioning it as an investment. But biotech remains a Wall Street darling, and pharma companies anxious for growth are grasping for it.
(Picture from The Unbranded Doctor, which works to ban drug industry gifts from doctors’ offices.)
So perhaps it is no coincidence that medical schools are now leading a charge for a higher ethical standard in the industry. Biotechs have long worked under an ethical cloud, one requiring an ethical sensibility.
Can they change things, or will pharma change them instead?
The conflict between business ethics and medical research ethics is a worldwide phenomenon. Companies are eager to both produce and promote cures.
Schools feel that their increasingly close industry ties give them the opportunity to demand a new relationship between town and gown. But they benefit from far more than research dollars.
Colleges have become patent farms, and researchers have increasingly looked to starting their own companies as the way to profit from their work.
So which side will win? Will the industry’s ethics improve as we move into this new era? Or will the universities’ ethics, in time, deteriorate?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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