"Good Old Days" gone for Biotech: Offshoring blamed for loss of funding, jobs in industry

[Human Torch]

Good old days gone for biotech

Offshoring blamed for loss of funding, jobs in industry
By Penni Crabtree
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

November 26, 2006

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/biotech/20061126-9999-1n26biotech.html

The business of biotechnology is undergoing a seismic shift, and for some companies there's no surviving the jolt. Take Discovery Partners International. The San Diego company ceased to exist in September, a victim of trends that are reshaping the biotech industry and, at least in the short term, threatening innovation and job creation in the nation's third-largest biotech cluster.

Increasingly, the venture capitalists who fund new life-science companies are shopping for existing drugs to refine instead of backing scientists to make discoveries. When startups are created, they're often minimally staffed. More drug companies are farming out research work to scientists in China, India and Eastern Europe, where tasks are done more cheaply.

For California, the birthplace of biotechnology, the stakes are high. Of the estimated 260,000 Californians who work in the life-science industry, about 70 percent are employed in high-paying jobs in drug, medical-device or diagnostic-tool companies. In San Diego, an estimated 36,600 employees work at about 500 companies, according to BIOCOM, the local biotech trade association.

“Offshoring is what destroyed our business, literally,” said Michael Venuti, former chief executive officer of Discovery Partners. “We had one of the premier chemistry services businesses in 2000, when the company went public, and through 2004 this company was profitable.”

[political_outcast]

1. I am generally an economic populist, but I can see an upside to this type of offshoring

What I mean is that the work mentioned here could do things like help cure cancer and stop aging. Pretty darn important. And curing cancer, aging, etc would help all working class Americans, and isn't that what the American Left should be about?


However, outsouring things like generic business software development, etc, is not the same thing. That does not provide such a huge benefit for all working class Americans. It only harms us. I say stop it.

Same goes for mass immigration "inshoring" of cheap 3rd world labor. Where is the massive benefit to all American working class citizens? Nowhere! It harms us. So stop it.

[leveymg]

2. First, heavy industry, then hi-tech, now biotech is being offshored.

America is a hollowed-out, jobless shell thanks to this insane strategy of free capital flight. Look at what's happened to all those "new industries" Americans were told the U.S. enjoyed a competitive advantage. In which new industry are all those new jobs we need going to be created? What's left?