Posted by bassman on August 29, 2006, at 12:57:18
In reply to Re: Psychopharmacology of addicting drugs, posted by laima on August 29, 2006, at 11:22:41
Nah; when it comes to the chemists and the other folks that make and screen the drugs. They don't care one way or the other whether a given drug works other than they'd like to be part of a project that yields a drug that is truly helpful to people. That is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. The real problem comes in when the Project Leader for the drug, years after the chemists, et. al. have seen it, spends his time constantly selling what a wonderful drug it is to management. Then, as often happens, the drug turns out to be more toxic or less effective than it was expected to be, but the company has spent $100 million on the drug because Junior said it was super. Now the PL has one of two choices: go into the CEO and say, "the drug we just spent $100 million on, and that I told you was a blockbuster, is a stinker. Let's cut our losses and get rid of it now" OR, "don't believe that last set of data, Boss, you know how [insert favorite excuse here]" Equally, The Boss doesn't want to go in front of the stockholders and say, "you know that drug we said was going to make $4 billion in 2008 and push the stock price through the roof? We gave it to people and they are seeing little purple pigs run around outside the clinic. We take that as a bad sign..."
poster:bassman
thread:679936
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060825/msgs/681185.html