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Contract research was a way that one out of school could explore different jobs and gain experience. You eventually hope to land a permanent position and take advantage of the benefits and security that come along with a permanent job. In the past 5 years, I’ve seen the industry become very unstable, in fact its getting to the point where you don’t know how long you’ll last. I happen to work in one of the largest pharma hot beds in the country so finding a new job is not very difficult, but…. It seemed to start with me, when companies were forced to reformulate cold medicines to use phenylepherine, this put a huge financial strain on companies who now had to spend all that money to reformulate. Well, we were using that money to fund our research studies but all the budgets have been “dried up” (no pun intended). Now I’m in a similar situation (again) on a litigation issue, in fact I was just getting comfortable. I’m getting ready to go back to consulting, but I’m hearing that’s becoming too expensive for companies to afford. Clinical data is being processed in India now, Eastern Europe is coming up to speed on clinical research (we’ll see how long that lasts – they aren’t using the Euro yet) so what is next, all our medical review jobs? India produces 120,000 medical graduates each year and operates at 20 cents on the dollar. This might save the pharma companies money for Wall Street but what is going to happen to the rest of us?
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