You know that I was "one of the enemy" for the majority of my working life, and I know that you are a wonderful "watchdog" of the biopharms, wanting only to protect us from their at times obvious depredations. And that is GOOD.
However, sometimes golden rings are found at the sewage treatment plants:!
Shall we call them a necessary evil?
YES, there is GREED, way, way,much too much GREED
And let it be known that as they bloat with more money every year, their contributions to curing disese are less and less.
But there is one (or two) lonely nerds/ nerdettes( read GENIUSES), working 12 hour days in the steaming, bowels of a great ediface of biopharma, underfunded and ridiculed; daily made to kiss the golden ring, then paternalistically shoowed away from the hall of the Armani suits to ensure another day, unfettered from their continuance at their endeavours, that will one day lead to our emancipation from PD.
That's the way it works, I'm afraid my dear (please, no sexism or other inuendos intended on my part, with the "my dear" comment, Tena is a good friend of mine). Away from the glitter; the lies and half-truths; the hysteric traders on the floor of yet another of the gleaming power towers, REAL science is taking place, and one day, the unsung inventors of our cause will be paraded and hailed as heroes by the same bean counters who just last month told the same shy researchers that their electric usage was too high and needed trimming, or, in lieu also of no new raises that year, the tools of their trade would be at risk for the axe.
Unfortunately, this melodramatic description of what is going on behind the sturdy gates of the biopharm giants is getting ever more closer to the truth, as older inventions come to the end of their "managed life cycle" with no new, even marginally improved "me too's" in their pipelines, and even fewer holy grail "blockbusters to take their places.
The reasons for the slack state of affairs in the pharm industry are many; in the midst of the last great war, there was an attitude among research companies, that their very CEO, or a member of his immediate family could find their very lives at stake. There were fewer rules and regulations, that subsequent decades have hamstrung inventive freedoms with (now it costs astronomical, completely unnecessary amounts of money to destroy "hazardous" chemicals, that are just "reactive"; and if thrown against a brick wall out back of the facilities produce only water or other innocuous by-products as the "hazardous waste", while the really bad (silent) actors get thrown down the drain).
All quiet on the home front (except for spending billions on making sure that "best in their field" researchers are kept out of the loop because they happen to have have had the misfortune of coming from the university of Tehran) has lulled us into a near torpor as far as ingenuity and a sense of urgency and CARE has been generated due to too many 6 figure salaries of "ineffective mangers" and even modestly productive workers, who earn twice as much as the real movers and shakers just because they started working when they disembarked from the ARK.
There are many more reasons for the years ticking by with no great success in some facets of medicine. I could quote things both correct and incorrect as far as one person can do, But I take my pardons with the REAL excuse that I am now weak, amotivated, losing perspective and downright just dead tired and having fully accepted my own personal fate.
One last line, if I may. For the just diagnosed, please don't take my personal ravings to heart. There IS GREAT HOPE for you. PLEASE, PLEASE, don't be disheartened by one PWP that has many other issues, along with PD. YOUR TIME WILL COME, even though it may, just may be slipping away for SOME of US. HAVE FAITH, for without faith, nothing will change for the better. G'night.