Kav’s Comments
Posted on March 28, 2007
Filed Under For Argument's Sake, Insights |
I thought kav’s comments on the last post were so strong I wanted to highlight them so I’ve put them up here. Hope that’s okay and thanks to KAV, who used to work in pharma compliance….
“One of the main problems as I saw it (and the reason I got out of the industry)
is that for all the billions of pounds the pharma industry makes, as little as
possible is invested in the staff who carry out these studies. Spend
millions discovering a drug? Sure. When it comes to the testing though, pay is
unbelievably poor in light of the criticality of the work being carried out.
Not only that, the education of staff - how what they’re doing affects Joe
Public - leaves a lot to be desired. The bigger picture is never discussed. Can
you imagine how much more likely a person would be to care about what they’re
doing if it’s been drilled home to them that people’s lives depend on what they
do? When they spend all day in the lab shaking test tubes, it’s no wonder a lot
of them don’t even consider this. Apathy and complacency were par for the
course among us.
That said, one of the things that often amused me was the horrendous quality of
the data produced by doctors during clinical trials. Doctors, whose sworn
purpose is to protect human life. You’d imagine that work on humans would be
even more stringently controlled than pre-clinical work, but judging by the
quality of data I used to see coming through, doctors themselves needed to be
educated on the importance of producing quality output. The critical
distinction between medical knowledge and the knowledge of how to conduct
quality scientific research never seemed to be considered an issue. “
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Thanks Haydn, no problem at all.