She went from having two large tumours in her brain and lesions throughout her body to cancer free in a little over six months.
It was amazing.
She is still cancer free but the ongoing drugs she must take have had some side effects. She has developed a mild form of epilepsy and is no longer allowed to drive (lucky she lives in a small place where everyone just walks around)
Related to the above, kinda:
Having spent almost the entirety of my working life at pharma companies, I can safely say that while the R&D and scientist level folks enjoy the development process and striving to come up with products that actually have a therapeutic benefit, the main thing that the vast majority of the executives care about is the vast quantities of $$$ the drugs will bring in. To them, saving lives (or enhancing quality of lives) is purely a means to an end.
In what type of job ?
I once was a regional manager for Abbott, and my office had both the Diagnostic and pharmaceutical divisions. There was a massive difference in the outlook and attitude between the two sales groups, and while there were huge sales incentives for above target performance the diagnostic group were all medical scientists of some description who cared about the diagnostic performance of their products, while the pharma people were not scientists and only cared about sales.
Diagnostic people would run tests and trials which was an obvious difference. Both sets of people were honest and hardworking, just their motivations were different.
Abbott was a strange company, the founder was a strict Methodist and when I worked for them, there was still a rule on no alcohol was allowed in Abbott buildings or at any Company function. Made it hard to entertain customers, especially as they all loved a free lunch.
Exactly, and improved the lives of millions if not billions
Scientific (QC, R&D, product development) and Manufacturing Operations roles, more latterly in documentation and regulatory affairs. Mainly for companies developing & manufacturing critical prescription pharmaceuticals.
The production operators really didn’t think too much about the patients. To them, we were just making widgets and they were getting paid to make the widgets, with incentives to make more of the widgets. It was really that simple to them.
The R&D folks definitely gave thought to the end users and what they were doing with the products being developed. The clinical folks definitely gave it a thought - after all, they liaise with the clinicians administering the products. Even the sales folks gave it some thought (between thinking about their commissions).
It was always the executives furthest up the food chain that didn’t. To them it was purely the bottom line. The rush to be first-to-market had nothing to do with getting meds to critical patients - it was purely about market share, exclusivity rights and making shitloads of $$$. That was their first, middle and last thought every day. The patients were always just the means to the end.
