杏吧原创

NATIONALISM is strangling the commercial development of biotechnology in
Europe, says a report issued by the Science Policy Research Unit at the
University of Sussex. The study, based on interviews with 10 European drugs
companies, sought to find out why the US is outstripping Europe in
biotechnology. One key reason, it says, is the reluctance of gifted academics to
work with 鈥渇oreign鈥� European companies.

鈥淲e found that French researchers in publicly funded research institutes
would only work with French companies, Germans with German companies and British
with British companies,鈥� says Jacqueline Senker of the SPRU, who wrote the
report with French and German researchers. One British company, for example,
tried unsuccessfully to link up with Max Planck Institutes in Germany and the
INRA, the French agricultural research agency. Both organisations rebuffed the
company on the grounds that their 鈥渄uty鈥� was to work only with local
firms.

鈥淓ach national group is very chauvinistic,鈥� says Senker. This severely
restricts the basic research that companies can extract from European
universities.

But in the US companies hunting for academic collaborators are welcome almost
anywhere, giving them a wider choice. 鈥淚t seems to me that we are not able to
compete with the US in providing the range and breadth of resources in the
publicly funded research base,鈥� says Senker.

The irony, she says, is that European scientists work together much more in
basic research than they did a decade ago. But as soon as industry comes on the
scene, scientists retreat into their national shells. 鈥淚f we are to compete, we
must have a single public-sector research base in Europe,鈥� says Senker. 鈥淎t the
moment, everything is too fragmented to serve the purposes of industry,鈥� she
says.