The pharmaceutical companies get a lot of bad press. OK, much of it is fair – “ethics” and that sort of thing – but you do have to feel sorry for them sometimes. They’re just struggling along, trying to make money for their shareholders, just like any other company. Look at this cup I was given a few years ago.
This sort of craftsmanship doesn’t come cheap. Produced as a service for doctors, who notoriously have brains like sieves, it now stands as a ghostly tribute to this particular drug, which after all the R and D put into it, ended up never catching on and has been relegated to the anus of history (annals?) And even when they do come up with a successful drug, they have to contend with bullies like Pharmac who really screw them to the wall, squeezing out their profit margins so they can barely scratch a living. In fact I’m thinking of setting up a GoFundMe page for 3M- Boehringer-Glaxo-Merck-Eli Lilly-Squib (I think they all bought each other out in an orgy of capitalism a few years ago.) Who’s with me?