Last month David Cameron said that he had “personally been on the phone to some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies, like Amgen, like Pfizer” to encourage them to invest and grow. This seemed like excellent news at the time, because a growth in the pharmaceutics industry would be excellent for our field and excellent for Pharmacy. Unfortunately the exact opposite seems to be happening.

The Real Problem

Politicians are showing concern for loss of jobs and business, but these issues are only secondary to the glaringly obvious problem which we now face. The research and development facility which has been in Sandwich, Kent, for over sixty years is closing down and hence will now be less involved in research and development.

That’s the problem!

Ian Read, the new CEO, plans to cut research and development costs by upto $3Billion! While everyone keeps thinking about jobs and crying on the loss of business, am I the only one who is worried about the lack of research and development?

If research and development are cut back, new drugs will no longer be developed and existing drugs will not be improved. The soul of Pzier as a  pharmaceutics giant will vanish and how long will Pfizer last? The responsibility of research and development will fall on to Sanofi, GSK and the other giants.

Of course there may be an advantage here. Since Pfizer has such a large stake of pharmaceutical industry in terms of research and development, this may leave a vacuum for smaller companies to mop up to their advantage. If this were to happen, this would obviously be great for the industry because the large pharmaceutical companies will in turn have less control of the market and more competition. More competition would drive all the companies in research and development to compete in order to achieve new and better drugs and dosage forms.

Still, it is worrying to see the facility where Viagra was born closing down. The Kent facility was obviously doing something right in its prime to have developed many world changing drugs such as Viagra and Maraviroc.

Conclusion

There is already existing pressure on politicians to encourage business and jobs for local populations. There seems to be a lack of interest in the fact that a research and development facility of a major pharmaceutical company has closed down. Politicians need to realise that research and development is as important as jobs and business, hence need to encourage fair competition for all other companies, so we don’t see a repeat of this close down.

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Why?

The first and foremost reason I created Abulcasis was because of my passion. I am a third year Pharmacy student and I didn’t have a way of expressing my passion apart from studying. I set up Abulcasis so that I can talk about the things in Pharmacy (a lot of which are the same things in Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing etc) which I found fascinating.

In my spare time from university I used to run a blog as a freelance writer, but since I had a true zeal in Pharmacy, I turned my skills to blogging about what I love. This was only sealed by the fact that there are very few other medical blogs which don’t come under a “health” category.

Also, I feel that all healthcare professions are somewhat misunderstood. I didn’t have the slightest clue what Pharmacology or Pharmaceutics were when I was applying to study Pharmacy. I wanted to help younger people realise who have a drive to have a career in the medical field to know a little more about it.

Finally, since this blog will keep up-to-date with Medical news and changes in the field, this blog is for graduates and senior healthcare professionals too. I’m sure even a professor would love to be reminded of something they haven’t looked at since university!

Abulcasis?

Abulcasis is the name of one of my role models. His real name was Abul Qasim Zahrawi, but since that was hard to say in Europe, Abulcasis was adopted and some even call him Albucasis.

Abulcasis was a genius who was born in Spain in 936 CE, this was around the same time as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who was on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s coat of arms. Of all the people I see as role models, Abulcasis has always stood out.

He wrote a book which was a medical encyclopaedia which covered medicine, pharmacology, surgery, nutrition, opthamology, orthopaedics and nutrition. It was a book which changed the world of medicine forever. Many of his 200 inventions, such as the scalpel, still exist unchanged today.

What Now?

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