"U.S. Company Spends More On Research Than N.Z.”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29444, 21 February 1961, Page 16

"U.S. Company Spends More On Research Than N.Z.”

“The annual research budget for the company for which I was working is 20 million dollars a year. This is more than was spent on organised scientific work for the whole of New Zealand in 1958,” said Dr. J. W. McLean, who returned to Christchurch last evening after about 20 months in the United States.

Dr. McLean was associate editor for the second edition of the “Merck Veterinary Manual.” a standard work for veterinarians, the first edition of which ran to 30,000 volumes. He was on leave from his position as head of the veterinary department of Canterbury Agricultural College. Lincoln.

“The company is one of the largest and oldest of 12 prominent pharmaceutical manufacturing houses in the United States,” said Dr. McLean. “Its annual budget of 20 million dollars—about 8 to 9 per cent, of its net sales supports a research staff of 1150 for the purposes of discovering and developing new products for the prevention, alleviation and treatment of disease in men and animals.

'The veterinary and agricultural research, in which I was specially interested, has been directed towards the application for antibiotics, vitamins, hormones, vaccines and other products. It is of interest to note that a very promising compound for the control of worm parasites in farm animals is now being tested in Australia and New Zealand,” said Dr. McLean. “I was working for the first time in the cold, hard world of industry and it gave me the opportunity to see at first hand the philosophy and operation of the American way of life as it applies to industry. This philosophy is based

essentially on intense competition, hard work and elaborate organisation in all phases, including research development and marketing. ‘The fact that one such company finds it necessary and expedient to spend more in one year on research and scientific development than was spent in organised research for the whole of New Zealand in 1958 indicates the value of such work to industry and, in my opinion, the desirability of spending a substantially greater proportion of the gross income of this country in research and scientific development”

Dr. McLean said that the manual on which he has been working would appear late in July of this year. Extensive revision of the work which appeared first in 1955 were necessary to keep pace with the advances in veterinary medicine made in the last six years. Dr. McLean said. New sections have been added on hitherto unknown disease conditions and exotic infections. As examples of the unknown disease conditions Dr. McLean gave mucosal dis-ease-virus, diarrhoea complex and the muscle disorders including white muscle disease. African horse sickness, African swine fever and Nairobi sheep disease were some of the exotic infections described in the new work. The new inclusions have made the work swell from the 1400 pages of the first edition to 1850 for the second. The second will run to 25.000 volumes for the first printing. The scientist with whom Dr. McLean was associated as editor was Dr. O. H. Siegmund. The company also publishes

the “Merck Manual” for the medical profession, which is a handbook of about 2000 pages now in its tenth edition, on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in man.