Bad medicine for biotech

Boston Business Journal
Editorial
From the September 2, 2005 print edition

No matter how you interpret the Vioxx verdict -- jury activism or well-deserved comeuppance -- it isn't hard to feel the chill seeping into the drug industry. In awarding some $229 million (a number soon to be reduced by Texas law) to a widow whose husband died nine months after beginning to take Vioxx, the jurors effectively widened the exposure for all drug companies. More important to this region, the repercussions of the verdict cast a shadow over the ambitiousness of upstream research.

Aggressive risk-taking drives the biotech industry. Scientists make up one part of the equation and venture capitalists the other. Tack a few extra years of regulatory scrutiny and the possibility of a litigation feeding frenzy into the return-on-investment formula, and you can bet that certain compounds, perhaps ones with great potential, will be left unexplored.

The jurors said they wanted to send a message to Merck for the way it handled the Vioxx matter. The message to the innovators and gatekeepers in the drug industry is one of conservatism. When the scientists and the investors who support them have to hedge their bets out of fear, the medical needs of the nation will suffer.