> industry's competitiveness," says Jean-Francois Dehecq, president of
> the Efpia. "The European pharmaceuticals industry has lost its
> competitiveness because there is a problem of price - and innovation
> is not compensated."
Devious bastards, aren't they? Using cooked numbers, compared 1990 to 2001 (1990 was the trough of the US recession but boom-time in the EC, so *of course* R&D spending looks higher). You'd never know that most health indicators are considerably better in most EU countries than the US, though leave it to the Swiss pharma-multis to try to reverse that trend.
Novartis also has a lock on Scripps out in San Diego, according to my bro. The new metropoles are buying service-sector toys from the US candy store, pumping up that current account deficit -- despite all the hype, biotech has never really panned out the way software or telecoms have; a lot of this stuff is speculative froth, big companies buying out some technical process or invention.
-- Dennis