Any crime covered by the press inspires a wave of copycats.  So, it seems, the global heparin supply chain will have to be closely monitored for some time.  Both 2-D NMR and capillary electrophoresis have been recognized as the best ways to assess the purity of heparin. Both are beautiful techniques, and yield a lot of information, but they also require highly experienced analysts and expensive equipment. 

Question: What do Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego fires, and PAT have in common?

Answer: They all attract mercenaries, wanting to profit from confusion.

The sheer numbers of people involved in these programs leaves a lot of "wiggle-room" for experts to appear and skim some cream off the large amounts of money floated by major projects. Case in point: all the NIR "experts" I keep reading about all the people offering NIR services; people I have never seen publish a paper on NIR; people who have never worked in the pharmaceutical industry; people who had an instrument company's training, then set themselves up as experts.

As I said in a recent column, "You can't cheat an honest man." If the "Internet Generation" would take the time to actually investigate these "experts" they might not be fooled. However, most "young guns" don't do literature searches, but rely on webpages for information. As with Madison Avenue advertising, anyone can put lipstick on a pig. That doesn't make it beautiful. Add to that the politically correct habit of not being able to say what someone did at your company, other than "yes, he worked here," and you have a fertile field for faux experts.

When you look for someone to do PAT or NIR or anything, ask to see some damn credentials, not just a glossy webpage!!!!

Thanks, I had to get that off my chest. I feel better now.

Why do pharmaceutical scientists think that “their� chemistry is unique and different from all others? I have found the solution to numerous chemical (analytical) problems in publication of polymer and surfactant companies, where Pharma people believe that it is “slumming� to go there.

If I remember my chemical history, the synthesis of urea proved there was no mystic “life force� in chemicals produced by the body. By the same token, why do pharmaceutical analysts, on the whole, seem to think medicinal chemistry is separate from the world of organic and analytical chemistry, in general?

I am tired of attending NIR sessions and having Pharma people walk out because the next talk is about food or petroleum products…as if that couldn’t possibly apply to pharmaceutical analyses.

Bull Pippy! If USDA analysts can use NIR and other methods to predict analyte levels in food and cereals, natural products, wouldn’t it seem logical that the tool could be used for carefully regulated pharmaceutical products? I thought so in the 1980s but an awful lot of people looked at me like I had two heads. NOW, it is commonplace, but what about all the other methods we are shunning because they are being used by the “lesser� sciences? Hmmmm?

One of the things I truly enjoyed (before I became an independent consultant...while I was still employed full time by companies within the pharmaceutical industry) was getting the monthly company newsletters.

They were all alike. Each month, we were treated to pictures of the Marketing and Sales people in Cancun (or some such place) as they celebrated the success of the drug that was discovered, tested, formulated, manufactured, assayed, packaged, and shipped by those of us sitting in the facility in January in the snow.

Made me feel warm and tingly all over.

But what better way to show the disconnect between management and the “worker bees?" The inspiration for most “lab rats� is the science, love of discovery, good feeling at finding a medicine that helps people.

Others, who will remain unnamed (hard way to go through life: called “hey, you.�) are motivated by money and expensive perks.

Nonetheless, we are all still human. Prick us and we bleed. We have mortgages, kids to send through college.

We lab rats are aware that we make far less than sales types, and we’re ok with that…intellectually. Just don’t rub our noses in the class differentials and we’re happier. [BTW, when I complained about the newsletter to the people in corporate communications who published it, their solution was to stop sending lab personnel copies.]