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Throw light and and one may see much deeper than expected or anticipated. Health is a state responsibility and a welfare state carries out duties that obviously turn onerous in a pandemic; help from all corners -spontaneous, sought and offered - is accepted and broadly welcome. In the financial world, where plan, direction and targets are set with precision and the balance sheets scrutinized accounting for pennies(cents) to the last integeral fraction, charity and benevolence may have underlying knots and ties. Investments in research carry risks and recovery is a priority. The governance broadly looks into whether quid pro quo exists, the rest tends to be viewed as speculative.
Murar Yeolekar, Mumbai.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
08 March 2021
Murar E Yeolekar
Consultant Physician
Fmr Prof & Head of Internal Medicine, KJSMC <MMC
Wellcome was originally a pharmaceutical company left as the sole benefactor to a research foundation by Sir Henry Wellcome. Indeed I still have an old diary around with their slogan “Research is our only shareholder”. Eventually mindful of the way certain similar foundations had had their finances depleted (particularly I was told the Nuffield Foundation), the Foundation sold the Wellcome Company and spread their investments around a wider field. It is therefore unsurprising that they have continued to invest in pharmaceutical companies some of which no doubt at this present time are working on Covid while some are working on other conditions.
Thus as it appears to me Wellcome are continuing to do what they have always done from the founder’s death - make money from pharmaceutical products and invest the profits in further beneficial research. The only difference now is that the research is no longer in house. I cannot see any conflict of interest in this model.
Re: Covid-19, trust, and Wellcome: how charity’s pharma investments overlap with its research efforts
Dear Editor,
Throw light and and one may see much deeper than expected or anticipated. Health is a state responsibility and a welfare state carries out duties that obviously turn onerous in a pandemic; help from all corners -spontaneous, sought and offered - is accepted and broadly welcome. In the financial world, where plan, direction and targets are set with precision and the balance sheets scrutinized accounting for pennies(cents) to the last integeral fraction, charity and benevolence may have underlying knots and ties. Investments in research carry risks and recovery is a priority. The governance broadly looks into whether quid pro quo exists, the rest tends to be viewed as speculative.
Murar Yeolekar, Mumbai.
Competing interests: No competing interests