April 26, 2004

Making Drugs, Not Profits

A married couple attacks neglected diseases of the developing world

By Gary Stix

When Victoria Hale left her job as a pharmacologist at Genentech in 1998, she made a list. It detailed areas that she felt the pharmaceutical industry had ignored: orphan drugs for metabolic disorders, treatments for substance abuse, modernization of contraceptives, and global infectious disease. Hale, an ebullient woman who also had more than five years of experience as a drug evaluator at the Food and Drug Administration, looked over what she had written and decided that, of the various choices, fighting infectious disease would have the most pronounced impact on public health.

More here.
(links to the Scientific American website)