Slashdot Mirror
Offshoring Trends Net Biotech Firms
Makarand writes "According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, BioTech, once considered to be
the next innovative sector to help offset the jobs losses from IT offshoring, is
showing
signs of riding an
offshoring wave of its own. Foreign governments with a national
priority to attract biotech businesses with highly trained research workers and new
research centers are the new forces to reckon with in preventing the
exodus of biotech
jobs. Drug developers are looking at ways to cut costs of drug development as Americans and their employers are starting to constantly worry about the high price of prescription drugs. The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring."
Is anyone else not surprised at all?
Businesses outsource, even tech ones, even biotech ones now.
Shocking.
Oh, and f1r57 p057!
But do they ever stop to think that these people may be the best suited to the job?
The point is they do the work for cheaper than most would, and you'll find the majority do it just as well as a local. I guess we wouldn't have this problem though if our culture wasn't so based around the evil that is money.
Nobody cares if your drugs kills a couple Chinese people, but here in the U.S. you get sued.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't outsourcing a shining example of capitalism working exactly as it should? People always get so bent out of shape about it, but fundamentally it's rewarding the people/countries who are willing and able to do the same work for less. If you look at the unequal distribution of wealth as a problem (which I do), then the good news is that poor countries will get richer, as will the uber-rich that now have to pay their workforce less. The bad news is for the middle class. American left-wingers would do well to remember that the people receiving out-sourced jobs probably need them more than Americans. And American right-wingers would do well to remember that unless they're very rich, they're likely getting shafted.
This story just highlights that fact. Americans, do something about your government; it is no longer working for you.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Sometimes there are subtle differences between the label and generic drug(s) that can justify the label drug.
One particular case is thyroid hormone replacement therapy, where it is generally accepted practice to not switch product, whether it be generic->label (synthroid) or label->generic. Doing so requires recalibrating your thyroid hormone levels...
Many times, patients want the label drug...
Doctors tend to leave the decision of what drug to actually fulfill the prescription with to the pharmacist...
Some health insurance plans have acceptable formularies that only include generics where possible or policies that pharmacists must provide generic instead of label, where possible.
I, for one, welcome our new bio-engineered East Indian overlords.
This has always happened. Any industry will have cheap bits that can be outsourced. It would be a negative for the US to try to hang on to the cheap bits. Tht doesn't mean more well paid high tech jobs for US citizens - it means more low paid production line jobe which will be filled, if at all, by immigrants.
Be elitist. The US can do R&D like no other. Yes, other coutries will try, and set up science parks which look just as pretty as US science parks. But it is not pretty science parks that make inventions, it is grade A researchers in an environment which stimulates innovation. Which crucuilly includes, in the US more than anywhere else, the freedom to be wrong.
Of course, yesterdays leading edge is todays mainstream. And therefore that which only the US could do yesterday, others can do today - and will, for less money. If you stop a US company outsourcing he things that can be done cheaply overseas, you will actually have a negative effect: a wholly overseas compay will outcompete them and put them nout of business.
But the US has a 100 year record of finding new things to do. In the old things, all the overseas contries are competing with each other: in the new, the US has the field to itself
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I see one of the big reasons for offshoring as the current medical system. The ridiculous costs of attempting healthcare for workers is one of the costs of employing people.
Offshoring doesn't carry that burden. Health care should be 100% unrelated to employer packages
Ironic
RST
Explain to me why drug costs are cheaper in Canada if they get their drugs from the same sources as Americans. Why do American pharmaceutical firms need to send their development offshore?
The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring.
Does anybody else finds this... well... horrible and sinister? So, just because consumers want a modicum of security -- and security means more expenses -- big pharma is outsourcing human testing?
As in, testing potentially dangerous new products on poor (non caucasian, perhaps?) people is sooooo much cheaper in [insert favourite country here]?
So, on one hand these big companies are making tons of dough off their rich consumers. Then, they refuse to sell certain drugs *cough cough* AIDS *cough cough* in poor countries (no enough profits to be made in Africa, mate!). Then, they put pressure on third-world countries (Brazil, India, etc) who decide to copy these products anyway.
Then , they simply outsource human testing, because "we big corporations have a God-given right to make even more profit ". Even if it means less security and more unemployed.
Is this sick or what?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Drug developers are looking at ways to cut costs of drug development as Americans and their employers are starting to constantly worry about the high price of prescription drugs.
Countries like Brazil have taken to producing drugs like tri-therapy drugs for AIDS without paying the license, to make them affordable for their population, as a matter of national emergency. Others, like India, have made an entire industry out of producing generic drugs.
These medicines are cheap, yes, but the cost is offset onto the newer meds, those that are still produced exclusively, or under license, that aren't in the public domain yet. That's why, when countries hurt the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies, said companies jack up the price of the top line.
Combine that with the cost of doing any sort of medical-related business in the US, due mainly to insurance costs, due in turn to ligitation-happy Americans, and you know why certain silly little pills can cost hundreds of dollars.
I'm not saying pharmaceutical labs aren't also part of their own problem (it's in great part their very greediness that made the generic knockoffs industry the huge success it is in the first place), but with their margins reduced all the time, it's not wonder they try to cut cost and practice off-shoring. And time has shown that it's not their sense of morals that will compel them to hire local workers...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, BioTech, once considered to be the next innovative sector to help offset the jobs losses from IT offshoring
I know this is sometimes hard for Americans to understand, but the US is not the only nation with advanced research and development. And just because the US likes to think of biotech and computers as "American" technologies industries, they have always been, and continue to be, international efforts.
Note, also, that European and Asian companies have been "off-shoring" to the US for decades: a lot of their R&D, marketing, and financial services have been located in the US.
Foreign governments with a national priority to attract biotech businesses with highly trained research workers and new research centers are the new forces to reckon with in preventing the exodus of biotech jobs.
After decades during which the US has siphoned off the best and brightest from all around the globe ("brain drain"), with high-paying jobs and a good standard of living, it is only natural that other nations are finally trying to do something about it. The real question is why this hasn't happened earlier. Maybe nations like Britain will finally pay their researchers a decent salary, and maybe nations like Japan will finally pay respect to their researchers.
Of course, the implications for the US are not so good: US R&D is based on highly-skilled immigrants. If that flow stops, it may temporarily create a little more demand for US workers, but it will primarily make the US overall far less competitive.
Compared to the rest of the world. In the global market it's that simple.
China and India have very well educated, very intelligent engineers, scientists, developers and they can do as good a job, cheaper.
We keep hearing the argument, "When all the jobs have been offshored, who will buy the products?". Well, duh. The Chinese and Indians will. This means BTW that they are going to be large markets.
We're going to have to start competing on price and that basically means devaluation of the currency.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Of course another industry wants to offshore... Corporations are not out to make make a good product, or even make customers happy, they exist to promote the wealth of it's stockholders, and nothing promotes wealth like cutting production costs... The key to curbing the trend of offshoring rests in innovation by us for us, if your pissed you got laid off so someone in India can have your job for a fraction of the costs, make your own company and employ others like you and prove you can do better. The key to good business is a matter of survival, do what you need to to survive, fair doesn't exist in business, if you don't like the rules change them, but don't get pissed because someone is doing that so they can survive... IMHO I agree it's unfortunate that offshoring is becoming a trend, but lets stop whining and do something about it....
I worked for a bank for a few years (in a country far away, where they have numbered accounts and you're actually looking at jail time for revealing customer data) and something like this was just unheard of.
The absolute main security issue was customer data. Not that they would have fancied embezzlement or theft but this was looked upon far less serious then compromising customer data, period.
In the data centers (which you had to physically access in order to query real customer data, safe for the front office and also there it was very restricted what you could look at) you had to go through multiple layers of security and where not permitted to even remove a printout.
Computers where dismanteled and disks shredded, they where never for resale. This was applicable for every last computer from every last branch and office
Now, I agree shit happens. Probably in their case it started with outsourcing such a critical tasks to "ACMEs chep disk blanking operation" in order to save a few bucks. This is not really excusable, but it happens.
But what really gets my blood boiling are statements like the one from that PR bimbo, which are just utter bullshit.
Maybe she should apply for a job at Microsoft to sell "trustworthy computing".
Interesting discussion: http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/04/dark_side_of_ou tsourcing.html
How does the US prescription system work? Are doctors prescribing branded drugs over cheaper, generic drugs in order to receive funding from drug companies?
Actually, it's more the case that doctors, faced with a bewildering choice of new drugs to keep up with every single year, end up prescribing the drug that they're most familiar with. This ends up usually being the drug that they're given the most free samples of.
As far as HMOs are concerned, they have a list of drugs and their generic equivalents, and if you use the brand name, you'd better have a damn good reason for doing so.
The only people getting funding from drug companies are researchers, and clinical test sites. For regular folks (ie, doctors, interns, etc.) they get a lot of swag and free drug samples (as well as seminars, etc.), but they're not supposed to get cash.
Frankly, high drug costs (at the counter, not high development costs) leading to offshoring is a red herring. The trend toward offshoring has to do more with escaping regulatory hurdles which prevent certain types of research (stem cells, anyone?), the lousy payoff in domestic drug research, and the rise of very competitive research and testing labs overseas.
Check an interesting discussion on offshoring. Read the the comments after the article and the first comment. Things are not as cheap as they made out to be. There is no space between 'o' and 'u.' http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/04/dark_side_of_ou tsourcing.html
i guess the question it spawns is how much longer the west, and principally the US, can continue to maintain such a differential in standard of living vis-a-vis places like india. all other things being equal, and in the absence of no new earth-shatttering productivity gains, i don't think it will be long.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
But for those who haven't, here is a thought-provoking article on some of the basic issues posed by outsourcing. The article focuses on IT offshoring, but it may be a useful appetizer for /.ers delving into the biotech offshoring discussion.
that once Lawyers jobs start getting outsourced, we will see changes in government priorities.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But considering I work for a startup pharmaceutical company, I feel I gotta say something. Lots of people here seem to think that the HIGH costs of drugs are related to pure profit. Working as a techie in the field myself, I'm really surprised people don't know that the high costs has more to do with spending $10-20 MILLION dollars to get a drug through the FDA then it does with trying to make a profit on it.
It's no wonder people go overseas...drugs are a LOT easier to produce there..
And yes, $10 million is usually the minimum amount of money needed to get APPROVAL to get a single drug into the marketplace in the US. Anyone else knows of a better way to sell a product that costs $10 million + production costs to produce BEFORE they see a profit?
Honestly, you have better luck with a Krispy Kreme donut.....
Given that some of the best minds are overseas, isn't it a tad arrogant to view it all as 'outsourcing'? In some cases, the US is probably buying overseas expertise, which is not available in the US? Consequently, the US is benefiting and learning from India (and others), not the other way around.
But then a company making business elsewhere based on the US should not be allowed to bring capital gains back to the country of origin.
Or are you the kind of person that wants to have his cake and eat it, resell it, outsource it, etc...?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The problem for the Empire was that it gradually outsourced everything to the provinces - the grain supply (Egypt), mining, other agriculture. Like the US it imported the most able provincials and gave them citizenship to encourage them to support the system. But eventually the focus of power moved to the provinces, Rome itself became decadent (who needed to earn a proper living?) Even most of the army was recruited abroad. And the Empire collapsed. The remains of the Empire that survived - in Byzantium - was a statist civilisation in which capitalism was rigorously controlled, based around many small artisans and companies of very limited size, in which the Government interfered in production, distribution and exchange. Sound like anywhere?
Endless outsourcing may be capitalism, but what happens on the day when R&D is carried out abroad, manufacturing is all done abroad, the Internet, cheap broadcasting and cheaper film making has destroyed the US dominance in media, the US army is too small to control even a small dissident country (look at the problems posed by Iraq...we could kill everybody, but imagine the backlash), the rest of the world sees that the Emperor has no clothes, and the dollar collapses?
Live off intellectual property? Can you imagine the rest of the world agreeing to observe US patents which frequently would not get through the assessment stage in European countries?
At that point the super-rich will be sitting on piles of worthless dollars, and farming may look like the smart option again.
OK, it probably won't be that bad. But too much policy at the moment seems to be predicated on the idea that the US can control the rest of the world financially or militarily, and the example of Rome shows that unrestricted capitalism is likely to destroy the very factors that make that possible.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
To practice law, you have to be a member of the bar of the state in which you want to practice. To be a member of the bar, you have to pass the bar exam and graduate from an accredited law school. To graduate from an accredited law school, you have to have spent a minimum of two full years attending law school (with few, minor, and expensive exceptions). Attending a law school means being in residence, regularly attending classes. In other words, you can't take correspondence courses.
Bottom Line: To practice law in America, you must have an American legal education.
There are only 2 things we Americans can call "secure" industries: farming and bullshitting.
Farming doesn't need much explanation. But like George Carlin says, the USA will always be the world leader in manufacture and export of Bullshit. Be it Hollywood bullshit, musical bullshit, or Madison Avenue bullshit, we are the supreme overlords.
All other industries are merely waiting in line to be outsourced.
The USA is hemorrhaging its own wealth.
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
No, the right question is: what jobs can't be offshored? And the answer is damned few of them -- only those that truly require a physical presence.
And guess what? Technology reduces the number of jobs that require a physical presence. You think the fact that offshoring is happening right now is an accident? No, it's because we now have the communications technology to make it practical.
So the only question left is what all the extra competition is going to do. I think it's going to destroy the global economy, as corporations take the extra profit and distribute it to those who already have the most money: executive staff, board members, and investors.
In short, I think this will destroy what little middle class the world has left, and put us squarely back in the middle ages when people were either insanely rich or dirt poor.
In fact, because offshoring forces entire economies to compete with each other with the price of labor, and thus the standard of living, being the only variable, I think we'll start to see some countries start to use prison labor to compete. That'll definitely take us back to the dark ages.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I'm surprised the article didn't touch on the fact that a significant amount of cutting-edge biotech research may move to Asia simply because of the fact that governments in Europe and the US choose to hobble their biotech industries with counter-productive regulations to please Greens and/or religious conservatives.
Newsweek International recently ran a cover story on the subject, entitled The God Effect
Sure, from the safety of the upper class, and with most of your income being from investments, outsourcing looks great - all that cheap stuff available at Target, eh? But if you're 50, have two kids and a mortgage, and happen to, say, be an engineer for a telcom, hearing that your getting laid off "will be good for the American economy in the long run" isn't much solace.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
This brings me back to my old question:
- Why are there no drugs that cure AIDS?
Sure, there's several different treatments to hold the advance of the disease - "take this the rest of your life or die" drugs - but no "take this a couple of times and you're cured" drugs.
From a purelly economical perspective, the gains to be had in selling a drug to someone for the rest of his/her life are much greater than the ones to be had from selling a drug for a limited period.
I cannot avoid thinking that in commercial laboratories, promising research paths to drugs that might cure AIDS have probably been put on hold for the sake of "survival" drugs.
I'm sick of being called lazy for only working 50 to 60 hours per week. I'm sick of being called stupid because I'm not Indian, Chinese or Russian. I'm sick of being called overpaid because I have have to survive to buy food, pay rent, pay off education, etc in a country whose cost of living is higher than in an Indian village. I'm sick of being called racist simply for wanting a job for myself and my friends in my own country. And I'm sick of the constant fear that I'll be layed-off while the high level managers levels of compensation keeps growing. I'm so sick of the fact that they leveredge this fear to make us work longer and longer hours. I'm so sick of it all.
For many years, US research and advanced technologies relied heavily on imports of foreign brain. Einstein, Von Brown (space missions), Sikorsky (helicopters) to name just a few. Sure, most Nobel prizes are won by Americans, but they are mostly managers of teams of developers, teams in which most of researchers are foriegners.
The only field in which Americans are the best and do not need foreign brain to survive is business.
So what is wrong in that American business discovered that is cheaper to pay the foreign researchers in their own countries like India, Eastern Europe or Russia instead to bring them in US and pay them on US level?
What is your problem as biotech or programmers or whatever if there are other peoples in the world, who are as skilled as you (or better) and available to work for less?
Take programming for example. Buggy programs were written all the time, before and during offshoring. Buggy programms is not a matter of offshoring, is a matter of management, HR, etc.
Wasn't US who promoted so heavily "free markets" and "democracy" into the world? Wasn't US who pushed for opening markets, dismiss trade barriers, free flows of capitals and supported the globalization? Don't tell me that US did that from altruism, US did that for a single reason: take the larger part of the pie. But like in any open market, small players might gain parts of it as well.
So I really don't see why this offshoring issue must be seen as something dramatic. Slashdot is read not only by Americans, but by many other peoples worldwide and many of them benefit from offshoring! They can build a decent life in their countries, they do not have to emigrate and be foreigners for all their life, they can be always near their parents and friends. Their countries can improve the general level of life and become larger, more attractive markets. Take the example of the former socialist countries that will become part of EU in two weeks. Or China. Or India. Why this cliche, that only in US the standard of life should be high and some developing countries should always developing and developing and developing?
So stop complaining about offshoring! There are only two things granted in life: death and paying taxes. For all the others each of us have to compete!
Of course, the next trend will be moving those people's jobs overseas: Executive Offshoring. Yeah that site is (still) satire, but pointing it out to higher management might make them think again about offshoring ...
The idea that all people are just as suited for testing drugs is very incorrect. For a drug trial to truly translate to an American population, it would have to be performed on a population with roughly the same ethnic mix and environment. It is not at all unusual for drugs and poisons to effect various populations differently.
An example of this is PCBs. The original tests on PCBs back in the 50s and 60s were performed on an Indian (as in from India) population. They found a fairly high risk of cancer and that is why we started working to reduce and eventually nearly eliminate PCB usage in America. Interestingly, later tests on other ethnic groups found that ethnic groups of European and African descendency demonstrated virtually no cancer response to PCBs. Indians were the worst with other Oriental groups showing decreased, but still present cancer responses. The cancer response amongst the Japanese was the least of the Oriental groups, though still present. This in no way says that we shouldn't have reduced our usage of PCBs since there are people of Oriental descendency in our society, but it does demonstrate that medical tests do not always translate even at a gross level from one group to another. If we had never tested PCBs on people of Oriental origin, we wouldn't have banned them.
In many ways, there is a more disconcerting flip side to this that has been largely ignored by the so-called "medical science" (I put that in quotes because they ignore so many factors, it is hard to say that they are a legitimate science). The flip side is that because we ignore ethnic origin and many "how they live their life" type factors of the people involved in tests and we don't work hard to identify the factors that cause failure in a drug for the typically small percentage that do have adverse effects with many otherwise beneficial drugs, we are very likely missing out on many drugs that might be very beneficial. Biology is not blind to these factors and we shouldn't be either if we truly want to call it or make it a science.
The genetic sciences are probably the answer. Eventually, we should see a process evolve of prescribing drugs according to genetic tests that determine precisely how a particular individual will respond. At that point in time, they can hide the ethnic factor by talking about the gene that interferes with the test instead of the ethnic groups that typically have that gene.
... unless you guys put a full stop to right wing teocratic politicians.
Lemme explain: where was the first human clonning achieved? US? UK? Germany? Nope, South Korea
In a recent survey by the BBC, South Korea was found to be one of the countries less concerned with religion.
In the meantime in the US there are people trying to ban steem cell research, granting legal rights to fetuses as human beings and doing all what they can to ban teaching evolutionary theory (cornerstone to work in any biological related discipline. Spare me the creationist bullshit, scientists use evolutionary theory as a matter of fact in fields as diverse as microbiology and genetically engineered crops.).
China and India just have to catch up to the level of sophistication of South Korean scientists and research instirutions, but if the US does not do anything to get rid of its ayatollahs from the political map, lack of action will have a direct effect in US people level of life.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My friend Neal made the observation: wouldn't it be cheaper and just as effective to offshore the CEOs, leaving the jobs here?
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
There really aren't too many jobs left that haven't to some degree been offshored. Even the "consumer" position is well on its way with many companies trying hard to penetrate what will soon be the ultimate consumer market, China. They are up to 70 million low middle-class type consumers already and are projected to pass the US in consumption around 15 years from now.
Essentially, I think we've lost the game. It is time to figure out why we lost and see if we can't rebuild. Personally, I believe it is because we commoditized education. By turning our education system into a mass production system aimed mostly toward rote learning of technical skills and largely suppressing the thinking and critical problem solving side of education, we created something that isn't special and is easy to copy. Just send your people over and have at least some of them come back with the knowledge and the textbooks and in a few decades, you can steal almost everything we have. In essence, we have destroyed the diversity and concentrated the methods used within the system. Thus, what was a wonderfully diverse thing that couldn't be copied, became a defined system that can.
My answer will never happen without some major upheaval. I would want the system to be transformed back to one that focuses on the individual and targets the studies towards expanding that individual's potential in whatever fashion is appropriate to their inate capabilities and desires in life. Instead of imposing a template of what each and every person should learn and become, encourage and develop individuality not in social beliefs, but in knowledge and skills. Build craftsmen, not robots.
More complex than that.
People at the tops of these companies are *always* posturing to go somewhere else, and don't plan to be wherever they are currently at for the long haul. With that in mind, short term extreme gain (even up to 3 to 5 years can be called short-term) makes them look really good to those that would move them, and few think about the really long term viability of the strategy (10, 20 years down the line).
The huge flaw I see in the outsourcing trend is that development costs are spent in region y. Meanwhile, company relies on economy in region x to buy the product, because the people of region y cannot afford the price the company wants to charge. The problem then seems obvious. It works for a significant number of companies to cheat, but at some point things will reach a breaking point. If a company pays employees at a rate befitting a certain cost of living typical of a region, but does not price anywhere near consistantly with that regions cost of living, it is unbalanced and simply works due to other companies not cheating and accumulated wealth in their target consumer region.
With this in mind, things should either be priced in accordance with the producing region's standard of living, or simply marketed at the same region that produces it. It seems very wrong for a company to lay people off and then rely on that same group of people to buy their stuff, because their new employees can't afford it.
Despite all this outsourcing, the costs of the results has come down little, so the development savings aren't really being passed on to consumers, but pocketed by higher level management who pat themselves on the back and get promoted.
I know, the same things were said about manufacturing, and the US largely absorbed that outsourcing. Now white-collar jobs are being outsourced and people like me are again screaming the sky is falling. Maybe IT outsourcing will also be absorbed in time. Maybe Biotech jobs can go too, and we'll busy ourselves with something, but the US is starting to mess with jobs that require more and more training and skill, and retraining becomes increasingly difficult. One day, one industry will mark the point where there isn't enough economy left to sustain the consumer market for these companies' products, and then it'll be interesting to see what happens.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've read several posts across several threads on slashdot on this topic defending outsourcing.
Many of the posters are self assured to the point of smuggness, arrogance, and condescension.
I haven't seen any facts from them or other people who support offshoring.
Anyone who has had a decent education knows that what academia knows is not always as solid as academia would like everyone to think.
Add to that Economics is not a hard science and that there is disagreement among economists as to the value of outsourcing.
Where are the jobs?
How will outsourcing create jobs for Americans?
Will enough jobs be created for Americans?
Will the assumed forthcoming jobs come before a large number of people experience economic ruin?
Will the assumed forthcoming jobs be quality jobs that people can support famlies on and enjoy doing?
Will the assumed forthcoming jobs stimulate students to study subjects that will keep America competitive?
How....will outsourcing generate these jobs?
So far I haven't even seen attempts at these answers from anyone. At the most you some smugness with a statement that pretty much boils down to
"Don't, worry it will work out".
Most people would not accept that answer from a mechanic when they hear loud clanking noises from their car without a detailed explanation.
Yet, many people are willing to accept that answer for their careers and the future of their country.
I don't get a sense that these people are stupid.
Maybe the whole thing stresses people out so much they just assume what rich people tell us and what other people parrot is the truth to free themselves from having to worry about it.
Maybe it is just the high school football rivalarly mentality of party loyalty in American politics that leads to people parroting all of this stuff without finding answers to those questions.
Where's the beef?
If you are not working through no fault of your own you should consider whether or not the president should be working after this January.
Steve
Okay, firstly I'd like to point to an article stating that Japanese are more prone to alcohol poisoning than Westerners because they lack or are deficient in an enzyme required for to break the substance down. Ergo, people from different parts of the world have different reactions when exposed to the same substances.
There's a similar case here.
What got me thinking about this was that a friend of mine often does clinical trials, and he mentioned one 'live-in' trial, in which 50% of the people were British/caucasian, and 50% were of cantonese origin. The trial was for a drug which was already on sale in the US/Europe, but the corp wanted to open the Japanese market, and so it had to be tested all over again.
Apparently there were no side-effects for the western subjects, but their oriental counterparts were in need of diapers fairly soon.
If you are a medical expert, then you might like to read Geographical/interracial differences in polymorphic drug oxidation, and Prostate Cancer Test Works Well for Black Men, in which it is stated that Black males have more of a certain enzyme than white males.
Would it be so easy to find a mixture of 773 asians, orientals, afro-americans, latinos and caucasians in Delhi?
Well, according to Y2K financials compiled in:
Off the Charts: Pay, Profits and Spending by Drug Companies [Act Up]
net income for the industry ran an average of ~20%, which is a great profit margin for any manufactured product.
Marketing, advertising, administration costs ran between 15% to 39% of expenses.
Research and development ran an average of ~15%.
Chart which illustrates this. [Act Up]
The profit breakdown has been extensively reported elsewhere, as this is derived from SEC filings, and the margins continue to this day, this is just the first source I goggled. NOVA on PBS had a great documentary on this issue last month which had similar stats.
The pharma industry enjoys record profits, pays its corporate officers extravagantly well, and charges the American public more for the same products than any other market in the world.
At the same time, we allow the pharma companies to deduct the expenses of R&D costs, clinical trials, marketing, et al, and give them patent protection so that they enjoy a protected revenue stream for many many years.
This industry then takes its profits and buys congress, ensuring that the government does not use its buying power (MediCare) to negotiate better pricing, and pass legislation which keeps americans, states and health providers from purchasing the very same drugs from Canada (Bush's recent drug bill).
Drug bill a well-financed victory for industry [USA Today]
For many, they have no choice: buy drugs or die. I do not believe the patent system was intended as a means to extort money from vulnerable citizens. In my opinion it's high time that our government bullies the pharma industry to arrange its affairs, so that pharmaceuticals are again priced fairly.
They can start by restricting advertising for pharma products just like they have done for cigarettes and alcohol. That should shave 20% right there.
For all the apologists out there who will claim "it's capitalism; they have no responsibility except to their shareholders", let me remind you that the government grants corporate charters and allows businesses to exist to benefit the public good, not just to extort money from the sick and vulnerable.
"You have liberated me from thought."
I've been reading up on this outsourcing for awhile and I've come to the conclusion that it is really only a symptom of a greater problem. Our system has sabotaged itself. From what I have read, there are three reasons why we should not support off outsourcing and why it is a problem.
1. It is a market externality. Lou Dobbs had someone write about this. Basically, it is when a company can get all the benefit with only partial cost from a decision. Take a chemical company that drops waste into the local river. It causes cancer downstream. However, in a purely capatilistic market this is a good thing for the company. Why? Becuase they can get the drop in cost without having to pay for the treatment of the people downstream who get cancer. They get all the benefits of lowered costs without any of the bad side-effects of the decision. That is why we have legislation: to deal with such situations.
2. Education - The free marketers have made one invalid assumption. They assume that since these lower paying and less demanding jobs are going overseas, we'll be able to train for higher level ones. But one look at our schools compared to those of other countries and it becomes obvious that will not be the case. Our school system is horrid. How will it train these new knowledge workers with a education system like ours? It won't. It will go to countries that have better education systems. So we'll reduce the number of low paying jobs, thereby reducing the number of people who can afford to better educate their children, while investing in the education of people elsewhere. Smart move. Make everyone else's population smarter than yours and then expect good jobs to come here.
3. Monopolies, the buying out of america, etc - Under this stands healthcare and standard of living. We are paying far more than the services we pay for are worth. Now, we'll get a bunch of capitalist showing up and saying that: the market determines worth. Not anymore. What determines worth is how effeciently a company can abuse the market and its regulations to its own benefit. You have monopolies in health care. An intellectual policy that is completely out of control. Tax shelters and greed that corrupts. Our government is no longer owned by the people, it is owned by political parties that live off of us like parasites and are in the pockets of industry. The government has grown to a size that is ridiculous. The ancient romans payed about 7% taxes total. When you figure in indirect taxes, we pay about 50% taxes. We take out what are effectively loans to pay for tax cuts so that we can buy chinese imports - stimulating the chinese economy but not helping ours out much at all. We have gone from wanting to live well to wanting to live like gluttons. Corporate accountability has disappeared.
So biotech going overseas is really inevitable. We are losing our innovative advantage by the day. Our education gets worse. Our bueracray gets larger and more ineffective. We are being betrayed by our industry and our leaders. So let's continue to complain. It won't help. Our congressman who understand don't listen and those are few compared to those who simply don't understand what is going on. Biotech and every industry will continue to go elsewhere as long as there is somewhere where else where they can more easily take advantage of the system. Money has become a goal rather than a means. We no longer have any grasp of what personal security once was. We are apprehensive for good reason. Can anyone see how this leads to a better future? I can't. I can see how a few people will be a lot richer but I don't see how we'll be better off.
We need to think about what we want and how we'll get it. We can't afford to blindly trust captialism anymore. Especially when capitalism is full of ppl who will cheat every chance they get. We need to find out what we want and how to work for it rather than to mindlessly try to uphold the status quo cause all things must change.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy