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For all its faults, the pharmaceutical industry remains one area in which the United States is still a competitive world leader. But without drastic changes in the way the FDA regulates the industry, this advantage may not last.
Back in the early 1980s I worked for one of the major airlines, a company you have probably heard of, even though it hasn’t flown in over a decade. This was shortly after President Jimmy Carter had deregulated the airline industry. My employer, a pioneer in commercial flight, had grown accustomed to doing business in a certain way and lacked the foresight and skill to adapt to the new environment. Prior to deregulation, airlines needed to have lots of lawyers, whose main job it was to lobby the federal government to get and keep valuable landing slots at major airports. Once you had those, you could count on a steady stream of profits, since the Civil Aeronautics Board limited competition on most routes, thus ensuring high load factors, and also set fares the airlines were allowed to charge. Overnight, things changed 180 degrees, and airlines had to pay attention to things like customer service and efficiency. My employer failed to make the cut.
We may be seeing the opposite phenomenon in the pharmaceutical industry. According to a recent report by KPMG, industry returns on R&D spending have fallen from 18% in 1990 to 10% in 2010, and annual growth in R&D spending has slowed from an average 10% between 1999 and 2006 to just 1% since 2007. Pharmaceutical companies may be turning to lawyers and the regulators to make up the difference. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
colchicine,
Colcrys,
drug approval,
drug patent,
FDA,
Takeda,
Unapproved Drugs Initiative,
URL Pharma
I met Taymor Kamrany in 2003, just over a year after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan had ousted the Taliban. We were both in Kabul, working on a USAID program to improve the environment for business and help government institutions rebuild their capacity to support a market economy. It was not an easy task. I was working with the management and staff of the Export Department of the Ministry of Commerce. Apart from the Head, a man in his fifties who had worked in the ministry throughout all the upheavals of the previous 30 years, no one in the Department could speak any foreign language. Though Afghanistan had once a thriving export economy – until the civil war of the 1990s, it was the world’s largest exporter of raisins, which were the most delicious I have ever eaten – its productive capacity was largely destroyed, its fields strewn with landmines, its best and brightest long ago departed. I was there for just a month, but in spite of these daunting challenges facing the country, I sensed a lot of optimism among both Afghans and foreigners.
Taymor, an Afghan-American, born in Afghanistan and relocated with his family to the U.S. when he was a small child, was bright, ambitious, idealistic, and very American in demeanor and outlook. Apart from speaking Dari, the main language of Kabul and the northern part of the country, and having some relatives he visited from time to time, he seemed to be little more at home there than I did. After we had each left Afghanistan, I learned that he had entered an MBA program at the University of Southern California, and still later that he was working for one of the Big 4 consulting firms. Then we more or less lost touch. But most people never prune their e-mail address books, so a while ago I received a broadcast e-mail from Taymor, linking to an article he wrote, which is published on the web site of the Middle East Institute, entitled Afghanistan 2002-2012: A Decade of Progress and Hope. No question mark. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Afghanistan,
Cambodia,
fall of Kabul,
fall of Phnom Penh,
fall of Saigon,
green on blue attacks,
John Kerry,
NATO,
Taliban,
Taymor Kamrany,
Vietnam,
withdrawal
Eurasia Group founder and emerging markets guru Ian Bremmer has come around to the view that the BRICS construct is nothing more than a bunch of countries “united by a catchy acronym” and little else. His op-ed piece in last Friday’s New York Times notes that Brazil, Russia, India, and China “have formalized their club and extended their reach by inviting South Africa to join” – a development that occurred in December of 2010 and asks, “But do their meetings and joint statements really allow them to punch above their individual weight? What do these countries share beyond a common interest in bolstering their global clout?” Several hundred words later he concludes that these five countries “will sometimes use their collective weight to obstruct U.S. and European plans. But the BRICs have too little in common abroad and too much at stake at home to play a single coherent role on the global stage.” Has he been reading my blog? [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
BEEs,
Brazil,
BRICs,
China,
CIVETS,
Colombia,
correlation,
Egypt,
emerging markets,
Frontier Markets,
Ian Bremmer,
India,
Indonesia,
killer bees,
Mexico,
Russia,
South Africa,
Turkey
It must come as some reassurance to Mitt Romney that he is not the only would-be President who says remarkably silly things while visiting foreign lands. Last month Hillary Clinton, on a tour of sub-Saharan Africa, delivered a speech in Senegal in which she said that the United States would stand up for democracy and universal human rights “even when it might be easier or more profitable to look the other way, to keep the resources flowing.” In a barely veiled dig at China, she added, “Not every partner makes that choice, but we do and we will.”
China is widely seen as engaging in an aggressive grab for Africa’s energy and mineral wealth in ways many African leaders find irresistible. Unlike the United States and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, in which the U.S. has a dominant position, the Chinese offer money and technical assistance without attaching bothersome conditions on human rights, democracy, and free markets. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Africa,
Angola,
Bahrain,
Benguela Railway,
China,
CNOOC,
Equatotial Guinea,
foreign aid,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
Ghana,
Hillary,
Jose dos Santos,
Libya,
Magbass,
Millennium Challenge,
Mitt,
Nguema,
opium war,
Saudi Arabia,
Senegal,
Syria,
Tazara,
Tullow,
United States,
USAID,
World Bank
It must come as some reassurance to Mitt Romney that he is not the only would-be President who says remarkably silly things he knows to be untrue. Last week Hillary Clinton, on a tour of sub-Saharan Africa, delivered a speech in Senegal in which she said that the United States would stand up for democracy and universal human rights “even when it might be easier or more profitable to look the other way, to keep the resources flowing.” In a barely veiled dig at China, she added, “Not every partner makes that choice, but we do and we will.” [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Afghanistan,
Africa,
Arab Spring,
Bahrain,
Britain,
China,
China-Africa,
CNOOC,
Egypt,
Equatorial Guinea,
Ethiopia,
foreign aid,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
France,
Gulf War,
Hillary Clinton,
human development index,
Israel,
Karzai,
Libya,
Magbass,
Mali,
Millennium Challenge,
Mitt Romney,
Museveni,
Obiang,
Omar al-Bashir,
palestine,
per capita GDP,
Persian Gulf,
Rwanda,
Saudi,
Senegal,
Sierra Leone,
South Sudan,
Syria,
Total,
Tullow,
Uganda,
USAID,
Vietnam War,
World Bank
