Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Quotes
I have successfully challenged the Western world's existing model of pharmaceutical innovation, which leads to the creation of monopolistic markets for novel, life-saving drugs that deliver high margins at low volumes.
Mazumdar-Shaw, Kiran. "A New Model for Pharma Innovation." The Economic Times, Bennett, Coleman & Co., 12 Jan. 2016.
This quotation is notable as it shows that problems that are not dealt with in one generation can continue for generation after generation. Today we have the exact same problem with overly expensive drugs. In a capitalistic system, every business with good products and sales should make profits. But products that people need to say alive, most people think, should not make larger profit percentages than almost any other business. But this problem is over half a century old in America.
The Bayh-Dole Act (Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act) for the first time allowed universities which held patents obtained as a result of Government Funded Research to enter into agreements with corporations to develop new drugs from those patents. The theory was that, the number of new drugs brought to the market would substantially increase beyond only the hundred or so that appeared each year. Unfortunately, the legislation did not have the desired effect. By the first decade of the 21st century, the number of annual NEW drugs being brought to market was under 30 and in 2010 was only 10. The cost of going through required trials for FDA drug approval has reached hundreds of millions of dollars, and most organizations cannot afford to even make the attempt. Even if a drug is very promising, the drug companies will not invest the money unless there are enough people suffering from the malady the drug treats and the medicine has to be taken for a long time as with chronic conditions. The system works poorly for the society and the health system. Reforms are needed.
While this statement seems totally absurd to us today, at the time most politicians and judges believed it. Only the left wingers and the populists opposed the doctrine as well as most business owners who knew the truth but of course most preferred the have their own monopoly. One of the reasons the large American corporations did not want Jewish and Chinese immigrants is that those cultures supported highly competitive businesses and might give consumers a better deal or worse, their culture would argue for less monopoly and more competition. For more than half a century AT&T was given a monopoly over almost all telephone service in the United States. Finally the Federal Courts saw through the company propaganda, and ordered AT&T broken up. The “Baby Bells” have persuaded most state legislatures and regulatory bodies of this same argument, and almost every community of the United States has a monopoly on local wired local telephone service. The same is true about water and electricity and a great deal of American transportation. Every major company strives for as much of a monopolistic position the government will allow; some are overt like the electrical companies. Others are more subtle and use copyright and patents to be sure that there is no price or service competition. Fortunately, the high tech industry is to technologically competitive that prices have been have been going down constantly not like telephone and Internet connectivity, entertainment, education, and professional services.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur. She is the executive chairperson and founder of Biocon Limited and Biocon Biologics Limited, a biotechnology company based in Bangalore, India and the former chairperson of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. In 2014, she was awarded the Othmer Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to the progress of science and chemistry. She is on the Financial Times’ top 50 women in business list. In 2019, she is listed as the 68th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. She was named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2020.
