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Preface to the First Edition

A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Why the long face?” Why indeed. The pharmaceutical industry should be on top of the world with innovative discoveries and development of so many fantastic new drugs for treating life-threatening illnesses, while often avoiding expensive surgeries. There are targeted new drugs for treating once deadly cancers and for preventing blindness; wondrous new life-saving biotech products for treating stroke and multiple sclerosis; amazing new lifestyle enhancement drugs from growing hair and erasing wrinkles to maintaining sexual vigor; yet the pharmaceutical industry is trashed nightly as being second only to the tobacco industry in the corporations-we-hate-most department.

Politicians sensing this are quick to lay blame, announce conspiracies, demand lower prices and push for re-importation of low-priced drugs from foreign countries. African countries blame them as if they started the AIDS epidemic, instead of coming up with promising treatments. Generic drugs are thought to be the answer to what is wrong with healthcare, while innovators are viewed at best with a jaundiced eye. In this charged and decidedly unfriendly environment, why write this book?

In fact there is nothing wrong with generics and they are a valuable and necessary part of a good health care system. However, there would be no generics without the innovators and I am worried that the public has lost sight of this truism. This book is intended to encourage the innovators to persevere in the face of this adversity and to redouble their efforts to innovate and to continue to see themselves as the valuable contributors to society that they are.

Martin A. Voet

December 3, 2004