WuXi buyout deal raises questions on scientists' pay scale

The average scientist on WuXi PharmaTech's Chinese payroll earns about $30,000 a year, roughly equivalent to 10 percent of what it costs to emply an American researcher with the same qualifications. Numbers like that make analysts salivate at the earnings potential of the publicly traded company, which has been renting out scientists to drug developers anxious to operate on a lean and mean R&D budget. WuXi recently moved to acquire the U.S. research and testing firm AppTec Laboratory Services [1], which may put some strain on the company's operating plan. I'd be willing to bet that scientists at AppTec--or anywhere else in the developed world, for that matter--aren't salivating over WuXi's pay scale.

- read the report [2] in the Wall Street Journal

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