October 23, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:For those arguing that national
For those arguing that national health care wouldn't cut research spending, there's this from Derek Lowe, who is a pharmaceutical research chemist:
I well recall that pharmaceutical brown-out known as the Clinton Health Care Plan. Everyone just stopped hiring scientists - raked the resumes into the trash can and spent the interview budget on something else. It wasn't a great time to be a fresh PhD or post-doc, that's for sure. Not that it was a picnic being employed, because some companies seemed to take the opportunity to make unpopular moves. And why not? If you didn't like it, where else could you go?
I'm sure some commenters are even now warming up their fingers to point out that he works for a pharmaceutical company. Well, yes, he works in research. I doubt he much cares whether they cut their advertising budget; what he wants is for there to be lots of jobs researching drugs. And he doesn't think there will be if there's national health-care -- and apparently, neither did the pharmaceutical companies, who, I dare point out, probably know better than you do. And when they thought the health care system was going to be nationalized, what did they do? Slash advertising? Nope, research. Posted by Jane Galt at October 23, 2002 11:08 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links