Drug research, development and expenditure - what about the future?

Drug research and development today is an undertaking requiring special skills and understanding, formidable financial resources and the closely co-ordinated co-operation of everyone concerned with the drug programme in all its aspects. Incorrect results, wrong deductions or decisions and unrealistic delays due to bureaucratic obstructions, all have an adverse effect in the final analysis. The price (financially and otherwise) we have to pay for the end-product is invariably intimately related to what happened during the entire development process. Everyone connected with drug development, in whatever capacity, has a moral obligation to ensure that the development programme follows a path which is as smooth as possible.