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Russia: Emergency drugs aid goes awry
607
Scientists groan at the paperwork required. As in other countries experiments fall into categories from Sl1 to S4 the pathogenicity of the organisms involved. to Germany, a huge volume of documentation uniquely But, is required even for a safety S1 experiment with no pathogens. Scientists spend hours at the copying machine, because citations have to be backed by copies of scientific papers. It usually takes months for an experiment to be
according to
approved. "Scientific spontaneity is killed",
Hausen says. He and his colleagues are certain that the law will hamper the quality of research and some lines of work might have to be abandoned. Promising young molecular biologists are being lured away from Germany and German pharmaceutical firms such as BASF and Bayer have already moved their research centres abroad. The law is administered not in Bonn, but by the 16 federal states of Germany. The administration is taking time to adjust to the gene technology law and scientists notice considerable differences in competence. Before the law was introduced they strongly advised a central administration for all experiments in Germany, preferably based on an expert committee rather than civil servants. But their advice was shunned. Their opinion is not asked for today either: at a recent parliamentary hearing in Bonn on the law and its practice they were not invited to give evidence. Instead, even high-calibre molecular biologists have to attend a 3-day course on the law and laboratory safety, this being a condition if they want to experiment with recombinant DNA.
Russia: Emergency drugs aid goes awry traditional way of getting rid of old clothes and of a feeling of guilt about being better off. One would not expect such arguments to come into play when peqple are desperate for immediate help. Careful selection and assessment of the immediate needs are prerequisites for efficient assistance, but some people seem to have different ideas. Pharmaceutical production in the former USSR has dropped to below 5% of the 1990 level; galloping inflation and the disintegration of the COMECON alliance have all but stopped imports from elsewhere. Donations of drugs have therefore been welcomed, but initial enthusiasm quickly turned sour when it was discovered that some donations consisted of unnecessary and even expired drugs such as 189 000 bottles of dextromethorphan cough syrup from a US agency. A carefully organised Dutch television campaign to which several people have contributed money offered a choice of 25 "emergency" drugs: the worst examples were pentoxifylline and clonidine as the only antihypertensive agents, and low-dosage, slow-release isosorbide dinitrate for angina; other doubtful items included triamterene and spironolactone as diuretics and pancreatic enzymes and bismuth preparations as the only gastrointestinal drugs. Russia has been blamed for neglecting health care and spending 45% of its national budget on defence, and in medical treatment many wrong choices have been made. But how can we in the west blame our Russian colleagues for misusing drugs when we give them wrong ones? Russian medicine has been used to irregular and inappropriate drug supplies in a nation with a highly centralised, inefficient, and corrupt distribution system. Doctors and pharmacists need re-education but are a
Leo Offerhaus
Conference
zur
Annette Tuffs
Jumble sales
donations of obsolete, inappropriate, and expired drugs (which has often been reported from Africa too) will not help them. The decision to let the World Health Organisation act as clearing-house for any future donations is sensible.
Impact of the teaching
new
biology
on
research and
Some scientists see modern molecular and cell biology as than a powerful set of techniques, but to others it is a tornado, uprooting long-established disciplines. The International Union of Pharmacology (IUPHAR) and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) sponsored a meeting at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, on Feb 28 to discuss the impact of the "new biology" on research and teaching. One of the main themes of the discussion initiated by Sir David Weatherall was "integrated centralisation". As a clinical scientist he found that most clinical academic departments were too small and too overwhelmed with service work and teaching to achieve internationally competitive scientific work. Only by bringing the researchers into a substantial group was it possible to achieve a high level of technical competence and instrumentation, develop scientific skills, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. Other methods such as joint appointments between basic science and clinical departments or funding a core group to which others could apply for advice and help had been disappointing. In Weatherall’s view the long and rigid specialist training requirements in clinical medicine and the lack of career posts for senior scientists are two of the main obstacles to clinical research today. The inevitability of concentration, in a world of level research funding, was a strand that ran on through the discussion of research funding agencies led by Sir James Gowans of the Human Frontiers programme. Networking of universities and in-depth research collaborations within Europe and across continents was another method of bringing a wider range of skills to bear upon shared problems. The continued dominance of the United States as a training ground was brought out in an analysis of the destinations of international fellowships (mainly in molecular biology) awarded by the Human Frontiers programme to candidates from many countries. 61 of the 98 fellows proposed to go to the United States for training. The new biology is sweeping through the pharmaceutical industry with even greater force than through the universities. The use of human receptors and enzymes expressed by eukaryotic cells is becoming the preferred primary screen for drug candidates. Dr L. Iversen, director of the Merck Neuroscience Centre, expects that all primary drug screens will soon be of this type. Some enthusiasts, he remarked, imagine that after demonstrating activity on the target human protein in vitro they will be able almost at once to test the substance in man. Alas, things are not so simple and there is an increasing shortage of more classically trained pharmacologists and biochemists able to take the discoveries from the primary screen through studies of integrated function in isolated tissues and whole animals. The preferential support of molecular biology by research funding agencies may have made matters worse. no more
Scientists groan at the paperwork required. As in other countries experiments fall into categories from Sl1 to S4 the pathogenicity of the organisms involved. to Germany, a huge volume of documentation uniquely But, is required even for a safety S1 experiment with no pathogens. Scientists spend hours at the copying machine, because citations have to be backed by copies of scientific papers. It usually takes months for an experiment to be
according to
approved. "Scientific spontaneity is killed",
Hausen says. He and his colleagues are certain that the law will hamper the quality of research and some lines of work might have to be abandoned. Promising young molecular biologists are being lured away from Germany and German pharmaceutical firms such as BASF and Bayer have already moved their research centres abroad. The law is administered not in Bonn, but by the 16 federal states of Germany. The administration is taking time to adjust to the gene technology law and scientists notice considerable differences in competence. Before the law was introduced they strongly advised a central administration for all experiments in Germany, preferably based on an expert committee rather than civil servants. But their advice was shunned. Their opinion is not asked for today either: at a recent parliamentary hearing in Bonn on the law and its practice they were not invited to give evidence. Instead, even high-calibre molecular biologists have to attend a 3-day course on the law and laboratory safety, this being a condition if they want to experiment with recombinant DNA.
Russia: Emergency drugs aid goes awry traditional way of getting rid of old clothes and of a feeling of guilt about being better off. One would not expect such arguments to come into play when peqple are desperate for immediate help. Careful selection and assessment of the immediate needs are prerequisites for efficient assistance, but some people seem to have different ideas. Pharmaceutical production in the former USSR has dropped to below 5% of the 1990 level; galloping inflation and the disintegration of the COMECON alliance have all but stopped imports from elsewhere. Donations of drugs have therefore been welcomed, but initial enthusiasm quickly turned sour when it was discovered that some donations consisted of unnecessary and even expired drugs such as 189 000 bottles of dextromethorphan cough syrup from a US agency. A carefully organised Dutch television campaign to which several people have contributed money offered a choice of 25 "emergency" drugs: the worst examples were pentoxifylline and clonidine as the only antihypertensive agents, and low-dosage, slow-release isosorbide dinitrate for angina; other doubtful items included triamterene and spironolactone as diuretics and pancreatic enzymes and bismuth preparations as the only gastrointestinal drugs. Russia has been blamed for neglecting health care and spending 45% of its national budget on defence, and in medical treatment many wrong choices have been made. But how can we in the west blame our Russian colleagues for misusing drugs when we give them wrong ones? Russian medicine has been used to irregular and inappropriate drug supplies in a nation with a highly centralised, inefficient, and corrupt distribution system. Doctors and pharmacists need re-education but are a
Leo Offerhaus
Conference
zur
Annette Tuffs
Jumble sales
donations of obsolete, inappropriate, and expired drugs (which has often been reported from Africa too) will not help them. The decision to let the World Health Organisation act as clearing-house for any future donations is sensible.
Impact of the teaching
new
biology
on
research and
Some scientists see modern molecular and cell biology as than a powerful set of techniques, but to others it is a tornado, uprooting long-established disciplines. The International Union of Pharmacology (IUPHAR) and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) sponsored a meeting at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, on Feb 28 to discuss the impact of the "new biology" on research and teaching. One of the main themes of the discussion initiated by Sir David Weatherall was "integrated centralisation". As a clinical scientist he found that most clinical academic departments were too small and too overwhelmed with service work and teaching to achieve internationally competitive scientific work. Only by bringing the researchers into a substantial group was it possible to achieve a high level of technical competence and instrumentation, develop scientific skills, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. Other methods such as joint appointments between basic science and clinical departments or funding a core group to which others could apply for advice and help had been disappointing. In Weatherall’s view the long and rigid specialist training requirements in clinical medicine and the lack of career posts for senior scientists are two of the main obstacles to clinical research today. The inevitability of concentration, in a world of level research funding, was a strand that ran on through the discussion of research funding agencies led by Sir James Gowans of the Human Frontiers programme. Networking of universities and in-depth research collaborations within Europe and across continents was another method of bringing a wider range of skills to bear upon shared problems. The continued dominance of the United States as a training ground was brought out in an analysis of the destinations of international fellowships (mainly in molecular biology) awarded by the Human Frontiers programme to candidates from many countries. 61 of the 98 fellows proposed to go to the United States for training. The new biology is sweeping through the pharmaceutical industry with even greater force than through the universities. The use of human receptors and enzymes expressed by eukaryotic cells is becoming the preferred primary screen for drug candidates. Dr L. Iversen, director of the Merck Neuroscience Centre, expects that all primary drug screens will soon be of this type. Some enthusiasts, he remarked, imagine that after demonstrating activity on the target human protein in vitro they will be able almost at once to test the substance in man. Alas, things are not so simple and there is an increasing shortage of more classically trained pharmacologists and biochemists able to take the discoveries from the primary screen through studies of integrated function in isolated tissues and whole animals. The preferential support of molecular biology by research funding agencies may have made matters worse. no more