Question: Will any of your work help the people who are ill rather than just making money for the companies selling the drugs?

Kiran Meekings answered on 16 Mar 2010:

Good question jenkins! The two are related – the only way to help ill people get better is to develop drugs to treat them. And unfortunately the only way to develop drugs is for the pharmaceutical companies to make money from other drugs so that they can research and develop new drugs. It costs $1bn per drug so the companies have to get that money from somewhere. I don’t tell them how to make money – I just tell them whether or not they can develop a drug. If a company was to try and develop a drug that wouldn’t want enough money to cover its expenses, the company would go bankrupt adn there wouldn’t be any drugs at all!

I don’t just research pharmaceutical companies’ drugs though, I also do a lot at looking at university and charities drugs (who are non-profit making)… These type of drugs and normally in very early-stage development and need publicity in order for a drug company to pay for them to be developed.

(as a side-note, it’s important to realise that drug companies aren’t all bad – lots of them develop some drugs at a loss (ie, they lose money) and give away drugs free to developing countries who can’t afford them).