Medical and Other Patents for the Use of Mankind

Abstract

BEFORE the War my laboratory was supported by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, New York, receiving 3,000 dollars a year. This help enabled me to work without limitation and publish without restriction. During the War, this help ceased and forced me to seek the help of industry. I worked out a method for the preparation of a substance of high biological importance and therapeutic value, a substance which has found no application yet for lack of a suitable method of preparation. As a recompense for the help obtained, I had to offer this method to industry and keep it secret. The result is that for the sake of 10,000 dollars a substance is inaccessible which could relieve much human suffering. In the present financial conditions of my country, the State is unable to give necessary support for research; and I, having greatly extended my laboratory, am compelled to seek further collaboration with industry. Possibly my work will lead shortly to the discovery of new, highly important substances, and I shall be unable to talk about them freely. The other laboratories and research workers of my country are in a similar condition and the free, generous, international spirit of science is endangered. Maybe my country, being small and poor, does not matter much; but such trends spread easily and should be suppressed at their roots.