Richard P. Grant - the guardian - 31 august 2018
The pharmaceutical industry gets a bad press. Some of the criticism is surely deserved, but the widespread notion that academia is morally superior is ridiculous.
It was summer. I had just finished my undergraduate degree, and was waiting to (1)_______________ a doctoral studentship. My research project supervisor had offered me the opportunity to work in her lab for 3 months to finish the work I’d started and write the paper. Who in my position would have turned down that opportunity?
The work went well, and we wrote the experiment up. I started my doctoral research.
Some time between my seeing the last draft manuscript and its submission to a journal, I received a note from my supervisor saying that the Head of Department had insisted on putting his name on the paper. He would go last on the author list, as senior author. My erstwhile boss said she needed to go first for the sake of her career, and I was to be relegated to second author – a supporting actor at best. This was my first real experience of academic research.
A few years later, coming to the end of a postdoctoral contract, I announced to my boss that I had secured a position in a small biotech company. I was literally screamed at for ‘betraying’ my training and the pursuit of science.
Yes, academia is cut-throat. There’s a lot of competition for resources and positions, and younger people (and specially women), get (2)_________________ in the name of Science.
It’s not all bad, for sure. When I was interviewed for an academic research position while in the biotech company, the head of the lab asked if I were mad, wanting to leave industry. The 6 years I then spent in his lab were the best of my research career. And one of the most famous cell biologists still alive – Martin Raff – was utterly shocked when I related the (3)_______________fiasco to him. Nonetheless, I finally left research for good, and went into the private sector. Now I work mainly with pharmaceutical companies, and I’m able to compare notes on the two very different worlds.
For the last 18 months or so we’ve been preparing for the launch of a new product. The product itself was developed in the company, from scratch, in a programme focused on meeting a particular medical need.
They are determined to see this project through because they believe in the benefits of this drug (extended (4)________________ , improved quality of that life) for real people in the real world.
The idea that research in academia is somehow more noble or pure than working in the private sector is as outdated as blood-letting.
Yes, pharma has its bad apples. But transgressions are quickly revealed in the clinic – more quickly than in academia. The industry is regulated to the nines to try to prevent misconduct
Pharma-funded clinical research tends to be published as open access, at least for a period. Large congresses for scientific exchange depend on pharma sponsorship to operate. The amount of money invested in research and development by industry is double that the money (5)__________________ via government.
And yes, many pharma products seem ridiculously expensive. But this isn’t necessarily a reflection of greed, as is commonly assumed.
Drug development is (6)_________________ expensive. To get a single new drug to market costs US$2 billion. That’s just under half of the entire public R&D spend in the UK … across all disciplines. When you consider that the patent system provides exclusivity for only about 15 years, (7)_______________that pharma companies charge so much. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t have new medicines.
So let’s be clear. Working in pharma is by no means a betrayal of some academic fantasy of ‘purity’. Pharma is full of good people, doing good work – and having an effect on people’s lives that the majority of academics can only dream of.
Isn’t it about time we all (8)_______________ this?
EXERCISES
1. Put the words in the blank spaces
a. disbursed b. lifespan c. hideously d. trampled
e. it's no wonder f. authorship g. take up h. recognize
2. Find in the text the synonims to the following words:
FOREVER JOB FROM THE BEGINNING PERFECTLY OLD
COVETOUSNESS MERCILESS WRONGDOER REJECTED
3. choose A, B, C from the following questions
1. in the text, the expression in blue “ blood-letting” means… a.- to donate blood b.- a type of medical treatment c.- an old type of illness
2. working in academia is...
a.- mostly bad for the researcher
b.- there are exceptions to the mostly bad working environment
c.- big pharma has as many bad apples as academia
3.- the author has spent…
a.- the best years of his life working in big pharma
b.- an important part of his best years working in big pharma
c.- the best years of his life working in academia
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