[Crisis and evolution in the field of pharmacy?]

A series of events has, recently, attracted the interest of the scientific and the business community, as well as of the general public: 1. Some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies fused to form giant conglomerates with international basis; 2. Established drug production sites have been shut down in Italy without being replaced by new enterprises and 3. Applications to register new drugs in Italy have significantly decreased in favor of the European Patent Office in the UK. These events are considered by the authors as signs of an evolutive crisis of the pharmaceutical industry, where companies try to maximize their economical gains on a world basis. In this process Italy is becoming the target of a progressive extromission from the production phase, but especially from the research/development of new drugs. Changes in the regulations and in the "modus operandi" of our country are necessary and advocated to keep Italy among the leading industrial countries with an "allure" of profitability for international investors.