If New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) is correct and Roche is indeed about to announce a deal to partner with 15 other drug makers to ramp up supplies of Tamiflu, the company is to be congratulated for its swift resolution of a thorny issue. Roche's initial hesitation on Tamiflu bore all the marks of the kind of slow footwork that characterized the world's big drug makers as they fumbled a response to the global AIDS epidemic. There are times when people's health has to come ahead of investors' demands for short-term profits, and Roche appears to understand that. Of course, the much larger issue of warding off a potential pandemic with new therapies remains a critical concern. Any mutation of the H5N1 virus could render Tamiflu useless. One deal like this will not protect us.
On a separate note, I got quite a few good suggestions for the upcoming special issue focusing on which regions of the world are doing the best job in terms of wooing biotechs. Keep them coming to [email protected]. - John Carroll