Sunday, May 27, 2018

Pharma Stakeholder Sentiment: Back to Square One?

Pharma Stakeholder Sentiment: Back to Square One?

Is it fair to push out the core purpose of an important process, or rather a mission, unfairly? Whether we like it or not, it happened that way, over a period of time.
Way back on December 01, 1950, George W. Merck (President and Chairman Merck & Co., Inc.1925-1957), epitomized the core purpose of the drug innovation process. This is something, which apparently was possible only for him to articulate exactly the way he did.
On that day, while addressing the students and the faculty at the Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, George Merck said: “We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.”
To many of us, it may sound more as an altruistic statement, and not really coming from a businessman who wants to excel in the financial performance of the organization. Interestingly, that was not the case, either. Merck removed any possible ambiguity in his statement by stating categorically: “In doing this, it will be as a business­ man associated with that area of the chemical industry which serves chiefly the worlds of medicine and pharmacy.”
In this article, I shall deliberate on whether or not the core purpose of drug innovation, as articulated by George Merck in 1950 has been pushed out of the mind of the stakeholders for good.… continue reading

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