Biotech Jobs Next In Line For Outsourcing - SF Chronicle

[hatrack]

Biotechnology, a burgeoning industry born in the Bay Area, is often cast as the savior that will help replace the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost to offshoring, the trend by U.S. firms to cut costs by sending work overseas.

But there are signs that the nation's biotech industry may be on the verge of an offshoring wave of its own, awakened to an international climate where firms can get qualified workers for as little as a tenth of the U.S. cost. "Some of the best minds in biotech are in India,'' said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, D.C. "You'd be foolish not to take advantage of them.'' A canvass of the Bay Area alone easily turns up biotech companies that are already testing the offshore waters. For example, Stanford University spin- off SRI International has an outsourcing deal with a research firm in Shanghai. South San Francisco's Genentech Inc., founder of the biotech industry, is manufacturing some supplies of an innovative cancer drug in Spain.

No comprehensive study has yet gauged the extent of biotech's movement offshore, even as the industry is held up as the economy's ace in the hole in a fierce national debate. Bush administration officials, CEOs and some economists maintain that job losses from offshoring -- particularly by the technology industry -- will be offset by new employment in innovative sectors like biotech that will be stimulated by global trade. But Bush's Democratic rival, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, calls firms that offshore "Benedict Arnolds.''

Any significant net exodus of biotech jobs would have a particular impact on California, which now hosts half the biotech jobs in the United States. By some estimates, the U.S. biotech industry could employ five times its current number of workers by 2015. If offshoring erodes California's share of that growth, it could worsen the strain on a region already hard hit by the contraction in information technology hiring.

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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/04/18/MNGBM672L01.DTL

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1. the R&D jobs in the US are the ones that don't pay the prime salaries

it's the operational jobs that do pay and these are the ones going overseas. R&D companies are not competitive salary-wise although they can offer a great creative environment.

It's just great that the clinical trials will be going overseas. That way human rights laws regarding experimentation on human subjects can be ignored. Tuskeegee Experiment, anyone????

Some of the leading minds on biotech are in India... puhlease... They aren't now. However, in 10 years they will be. They will be trained by us. And we won't have any great minds in biotech because our 20 year olds cant find good jobs.

I am waiting for the Fortune 500 to get up-ended by the Indian or Chinese 500. These people aren't going to be our slaves. They won't accept the low wages and unhealthy working conditions forever. Remember the British Empire? The Indians threw them out too. Ending labor exploitation. That was the point of independence. Remember Communism? Communism got its early start from the abuses in the Shanghai mills that were producing for export. People aren't stupid.

[Veggie Meathead]

2. What would be the use of sending our children to the most

expensive colleges in the U.S if they wind up on the unemployment line.Recently I read that Indian drugs and Pharmaceutical companies
are beginning to challenge well established American manufacturers
because the cost of production of these drugs is very low in India.
Some of our big name companies are beginning to form alliances with these Indian companies.I think it is only a matter of time before
we see reserach and manufacturing moving to India.

In industry after industry we are in a race to the bottom.Apparently
even surgeries are now being performed in India at well equipped medical centers at one tenth of our cost.

Instead of devoting our energies and resources to compete in these
professions, we are wasting our resources on wars and armaments.I hope
John Kerry has a plan to save our intellectual resources.We do not want to see a brain drain.

[cosmicdot]

3. will this include bioinformatic specialists?

"What I'm telling you just doesn't apply to the automobile manufacturing world. We've got people here -- workers in this state and other states who hold jobs that didn't even exist a few decades ago: biological technicians, software engineers, desktop publishers, bioinformatic specialists. These are the jobs of the 21st century. And if you'd have said to somebody 30 years ago or 20 years ago, gosh, don't you look forward to being a bioinformatic specialist -- (laughter) -- they'd have probably wondered what you were talking about." Shrub Discusses Economy and Job Training in Charlotte, North Carolina, 4/5/2004

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040405-3.html

so, Mr. pResident, what should people 'retrain' to do?

[Veggie Meathead]

4. It suddenly occurred to me that the same colleges and

universities in India or China that produce these creative scientists and engineers may also become replacements for our best universities and professors if they are not already doing so.If they can offer top
quality education at a fraction of our costs, who is to say that Harvard and MIT and Stanford won't open up campuses in India or China
staffed by local professors? What happens to our professors then?