"Good Pharma" is a research-based tome (maybe not that large but definitely scholarly) that decries the profit-focused evils of the pharmaceutical industry while putting forward the non-profit approach to developing chemical solutions to ilth as a more appropriate and effective model of how pharmaceutical development should be conducted. The Negri Institute is justifiably touted, in my opinion as the appropriate vehicle for the development and delivery of consumer services and offerings, particularly to those without means (uh, 87%). Yes, the capitalistic system has proven its ability to leave destruction and destitution everywhere.
What brings this conversation to a Philadelphia.com blog entry that addresses the points raised in touting Good Pharma is an important point about governance. Governance is effectively what distinguishes the Negri Institute from all those "other" pharmaceuticals. Just for background, the author notes that:
Founded in 1961 in Milan, Italy, the Mario Negri Institute is a nonprofit, independent research center named for a philanthropist who made a fortune in the jewelry business and designated part of it to fund the Institute. Negri named Silvio Garattini, then a professor at University of Milan, as the Institute’s first director.
Under Garattini the Institute operates independently from government, the pharmaceutical industry, and academia. As such it holds exclusive control over all the data from trials it conducts, even those sponsored by profit-making companies.
Most importantly, the Institute does not patent its discoveries and it maintains a rigorous transparency as far as the planning, procedures and publication of its studies.
This is all good according but the blogger raises questions about how the governance may not actually be better than the for-profit pharma folks. In particular:
clinicians and other scientists select and manage research projects at Negri, as opposed to commercial pharmas where business executives run the show. They consider it a virtue of the Negri Institute that MDs and PhDs run things, but many people experienced at working with biomedical researchers wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption.
More importantly, according to the blogger:
At the same time, clinicians and other scientists do not necessarily possess higher ethical standards or better skills at directing organizations. Anyone familiar with the politics of university faculties probably knows that those bodies are bear pits populated by narrow-minded, small people with large egos. Pragmatic decision-making there typically takes a back seat to ideological crusades.
Although academics prefer to think of businessmen as crude materialists who respond to the bottom line, the lack of any specific, objective standards for assessing activities at universities allows faculty members to make invidious judgments in defiance of common sense and legal due process.
Me, I would remain adamant: yes, the decision-makers in both systems come with human flaws but the inherent institutional core values and mission of a Negri Institute's leadership easily trumps those of the single-minded for-profits who's only mission is more income versus the lifting of all boats for a higher good.