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An Essential Partnership-
The Chemical Industry J
and Medicine GEORGE W. MERCK Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, W. J.
GEORGEW. MERCK
HETHER those on the professional and academic side and those on the industrial and commercial side choose to recognize it by such appellation, there is as much of the essence of partnership between these two as there is on the professional side between practitioners, clinical investigators, research institutes, and universities. Perhaps this is not granted more freely and generally because the chemical industry is quite able to succeed financially, a t least currently, as an adjunct to medicine, by producing and distributing essential drugs to the medical profession. It is not true that an industry which confines its activities to this type of work as its utmost contribution does not also serve. The routine practice of industry is, after all, a job and a job to be done well, no less than the job of the professional practitioner. But a t any rate, here we will not find the role of partnership demanding serious and constructive consideration. Frankly, we must assume the capacity of industry to prepare known and useful drugs and to supply them in highest purity; to maintain a staff of competent analysts and pharmacological technicians, so that all conceivable tests of purity, efficacy, and uniformity can be made; and to improve processes and to produce to economic advantage. All these qualifications we really do take for granted, or we would not dare to call ours a modern industry. Certainly these essential activities should not be belittled, for they are primary ones. We really are emphasizing their value all the more by accepting them as established essentials of higher services. In the end our success in fighting the battle against disease and suffering will be measured by the net addition we make to the sum of life-saving knowledge for the benefit of all mankind; and it is in the attainment of the utmost and speediest advances toward this end that industry and the medical profession will find themselves so essential to each other. The finding and the acceptance of a proper relationship are vital to the progress of both, no less than to the progress of the advancement of knowledge. To bring to such a partnership a real contribution, industry must be prepared to go a long way beyond merely doing a good job of supplying drugs and chemicals of highest purity. It is that long way that makes the difference between a business and something far more than a business. That long way can best be described by a word which has suffered so much and
been forced to do duty over such a wide range of meanings: research.
Role of Research To do research worthy of the name, to do research which will bring to industry true recognition of its contribution to the advance of knowledge, industry must have a t its disposal genuinely creative minds so placed and so protected that their mental powers of thought, study, and imagination can concentrate on problems of great difficulty. For even to see the problems clearly is of itself a major task. The industrial organization which aims to be a partner in medicine must have a group of such men. Such a group alone can give the necessary inspiration, vitality, and growing life to an institution. Such a group alone can take proper advantage of the peculiar facilities which a great industrial organization, with all its equipment, provides. It alone can infuse into the routine work of a commercial organization the freshness of the investigative spirit. And only such a group can make discoveries in science that will permit the company which supports it to talk on equal terms with the universities and research institutes, where the sole duty is the conservation, support, and advancement of knowledge. Men selected by industry for such a research group, if properly chosen, properly supported, and properly safeguarded by the management, cannot fail to create a spirit in the company which will enter into its very being.
Medical Traditions Then, to play its part properly, the medicinal-chemical industry must accept and, in so far as it is called upon, must live up to the traditions of the medical profession and of university science. These traditions form a great and noble ideal, and one which must be respected by industry if it is to enter and share with the medical fraternity its field of endeavor. The acceptance of this ideal insures that no one’s name or reputation will be improperly exploited, that no improper advantage will be taken over a colleague or over a rival, and that false and misleading claims will never, knowingly, be made. Industry must be prepared to offer its facilities freely to
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INDUSTRIAL iiKD ENGIKEERISG CHERfISTRI-
research workers in medicine. Sometimes this may lead far from what a commercial nianageiiient might judge to be reinunerative territory. It niay a t times make demands which seem onerous. But a true partnership requires that the load be shared, and, if the medical investigator needs assistance from the industrial research laboratory or development department, industry must be prepared to come fornard with the necessary contribution of activity and products. Industry, in turn, has the right to expect recognition and acceptance by the medical profession, provided it lives up fully to these ideals. I t has ab0.r.e all the right to ask that the men whom it has invited to become members of its research group be conipletely accepted in the brotherhood of workers in science. I t has never seemed that the attitude, still unfortunately encountered in some circles. n-liich places those working in academic segregation on a higher plane than those engaged in commercial work, is fair or Tyke. Seither can anyone say, whether he is a chemist coming with new chemical preparations or a physician trying to ascertain the usefulness and the limitations of nev drugsgthat a completely satisfactory nieans for determining their broadest clinical value has yet been worked out. Surely more faith in one another, more recognition of the duality of the problem, and a real acceptance of the practicalities of the situation, would assist in bringing about a more satisfactory approach to the solution of this difficult and complex situation. It is encouraging to see that this view has spread more generally of late, aiid that leaders, particularly in the profession but also in industry, are bringing to it not only their best ability but a large measure of good will. Patents The question of patents is disturbing to some in the profession and in the universities. The discussion here involves inventions in which contributions by the medical profession and universities have played a role, and particularly where the situation may be complicated by financial contributions by industry, through fellowships or otherwise, which result in the production of a new chemical invention. Patents exist, by the law of our land, not primarily for the establishment of monopoly, but rather for the advancement of knowledge and for the wider development of inventions for the benefit of mankind. The Constitution lays down this formula. “The Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries.” The important thing is not PO much the element of monopoly implied by copyright and patent for profit, but rather one of control and protection against abuse, all for the ultimate benefit of the people and science. It is merely incidental that this is accomplished through the good old human formula of stimulating efforts for the common good by providing special inducement and emolument of glory and profit to the individual or group that will efficiently and effectively dedicate their service and substance to the attainment of this objective. It seems that this broader concept for the need and utility of patents has been lost sight of. There have been abuses in the exploitation of patents and the patent laws, as there always have been and probably always will be abuses along other lines of human endeavor. But it is neither fair nor reasonable that the whole patent structure, including its fundamental concept, should be swept aside just because of outstanding abuse on the one hand, or of the seeming difficulty to correlate it properly with what is just and sound in medical experience on the other. Further, practical experience has shown that patents on
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stricti? cheiiiical inventions n ill direct13 assure a more prompt introduction and acceptance, and a wider usefulness of new definite chemical products and cle~elopmmts,because through the support and protection of a patent the chemical material IS immediately made available by a competent organization, I t is through such patent protection that the company re ceir es $01118 measure of assurance that it can recoup its capital outlay; and the product thus protected 19 promptly brought to the attention of the practitioners who niay find it, useful. I t Geeins nioqt eqsential that uiiiversities, mearch inatilu tions, and thoqe charged with the direction of thing.. medical. in our Gorernment, should keep an open mind aiid neigh care’ully in each case the advantages that patent protection can gn e in making inventions in medicine promptly and adequately available. The iniportance of control of the subject matter of a chemical inrention has already been mentioned This question of control alone is one that should not be surrendered n ithout careful neighing in the balance. Any inventor working for the alleviation of huinan suffering will nish that his contribution shall reach the patient in the way that he belieres it should. ’VC‘hat assurance has he if thc opportunity to manufacture is immediately thrown open to all for a nild scramble of exploiters? Particularly, what assurance can he have that a well-founded institution, fully qualified by financial resources and organization, can devote itself to investing the necessary time, effort, and money in his product unless there 1s some measure of control against ruthless and unscrupulous competition. In that connection, members of the medical profession should consider this question: TT’ould they undertake the investigation of an important new drug without some assurance of control, without some measure of protection againbt every other investigator’s doing the same thing, and without some agreement that further investigations along the same line on the same drug would be properly correlated with theirs’? HOTcan a satisfactory answer be given to this question unless there is some control over the new product, particularly when clinical work is not a matter of months but more often a matter of years? How better can such control be given than through the protection of patents? Cooperation between Industry and Universities Finally, a special iyord is due the universities and medical schools-the institutions which stand behind the professorb, the professors who stand behind the new investigators. Unless our universities-unless the professors in these universities-are properly supported, where will we look for development in the future? Where will we find the men for our research groups? S o t only should universities be supported by industry to the end that their teaching staffs may be augmented and their facilities enlarged, but also that more young men will be attracted to research, both for the development of the university and for the expansion of industry. With a few outstanding exceptions on both sides, it would aid both university and industry greatly if exchanges could be arranged more frequently, so that the university worker could find himself, for a time, in surroundings where he would have the wider facilities offered by a great industrial laboratory and a taste of its atmosphere. It would be equally valuable to the industrial worker, mho finds himself with his nose too close to the grindstone, or who may perhaps be confused by the complexity of problems pressing upon him, to retire to the comparative seclusion of the university laboratory where he would have an opportunity to reorient himself and a t the same time have the benefit of the inspired guidance of the leaders in university education a n d investigation. The degree to which codperation of industrial laboratories
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basis of understanding which every true partnership must find in order to be successful and lasting. And let us of industry strive and so conduct ourselves that it will no longer be doubted, but completely accepted, that there are workers in industry who are genuinely inspired by the ideals of advancement of medical science, and of service to humanity. These workers are worthy of the privilegeindeed it is their right-to stand shoulder to shoulder with those in the universities and research institutions. Let them go forward, together, to greater achievement.
has been welcomed by universities in recent years is not measured by their desire for the endowment of fellowships. For example, Merck & Company do not look upon a fellowship so much for what results may come out of it, or what claim they have on that result, as they do upon the value of the contact it engenders between their research group and the workers in the university or medical school departments. Here is cooperation; here is partnership, concrete and practical. From such contact can grow a wider and deeper relationship, so that in the end the leaders in industrial advancement and the leaders in medical advancement will meet on the common ground of research. Clearly the job needs both, and each needs the other. Let them devote themselves to finding a
RECEIVED May 10,1935. Presented before the Division of Medicinal Chemistry a t the 89th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, New York, N. Y., April 22 t o 26, 1935.
OLD-TIMETURPENTIXE AND ROSINSTILL
N
Naval
Stores Courtesy,
U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils
ROBERT C. PALMER Newport Industries, Inc., Pensacola, Fla.
EARLY every industrial history of America records that the production of naval stores was among the earliest chemical processes employed by the first settlers. Williamson’s “History of Maine” states that in 1606 turpentine was being made there which may be considered as the first recorded date when American pine trees were worked for this product. I n 1608 a small company of Dutch and Polish workmen were sent to the newly established Virginia settlement a t Jamestown to manufacture among other things “Hard Pitche, Tare, Turpentine and Rozins.” A cargo under the command of Captain Newport which went back to England that same year contained probably the first export of naval stores from American shores. The value of the extensive pine forest for these products was well recognized as early as 1586 by Sir Walter Raleigh, and England was desirous of making use of this new source of supply of naval stores to replace their importations from the Scandinavian countries and Russia. Tar-making was hardly an established industry nor can it be said to have flourished in the Virginias, for the early immigrants found it a poor substitute for the gold they sought. The manufacture of pine tar became, however, one of the first industries of the settlers on the New England coast and was so extensive that by 1650 towns along the Connecticut River were prohibiting the use of “candle wood” for purposes
other than light and fuel within six miles of the river. I n 1716, because of the rapid destruction of the pine, hlassachusetts passed laws to conserve the forests, putting an end to the tar as well as the turpentine industry in that colony. In the meantime the Carolinas were being permanently settled and the industry was being established in the new region with its much more resinous pine. By the time Massachusetts was passing its first conservation laws, the coast country farther south was supplying England with a considerable quantity of pitch, tar, and other naval stores and thus North Carolina’s later reputation as the “Tar Heel State” was born. It is well known that naval stores products were among the important “commodity dollars” of commerce in that period. A record of exports of Korth Carolina in 1750 shows about 60,000 barrels of tar, 12,000 barrels of pitch, and 10,000 barrels of turpentine (crude gum), which had increased to 88,000 barrels of tar, 21,000 of pitch, and 88,000 of turpentine by 1770. During the Revolutionary days the industry declined rapidly but with equal rapidity regained its position in the early 1800’s. While tar- and pitch-making continued during this period, crude turpentine which was by then being distilled for the recovery of the spirits became the important naval stores product. The rosin residue of the distillation was worth very little and for many years tremendous quantities were discarded into the river beds as an
