A joint venture.

I want to use this presidential address to make a proposal to the pharmaceutical industry and the members of this society to engage in a new kind of joint venture in scientific research and development. I realize that many, perhaps most, of us have arrangements with the pharmaceutical industry to test its products, but these arrangements are generally informal and are based only on personal contacts between the representative of each company and those who will evaluate the drugs. This has been a useful and necessary process for bringing about the general distribution of antimicrobial drugs to patients, but I think it can be greatly improved and expanded. In other words, I propose that these arrangements be formalized through a joint venture between clinical investigators and industry, to take the form of a nationwide institute for research and development. My idea is that this institute would promote research into and development of antimicrobial drugs and consideration of related problems in infectious diseases, and that its financial support would be based on joint contributions from the industry. There are a number of precedents for such a joint venture in other industries. For example, at our campus in San Diego, IBM, Control Data, 3M, Eastman Kodak, Data Electronics, Pfizer, and Verbatim Corporation have set up the first center for magnetic-recording research in the United States, as a multimilliondollar cooperative effort to meet the acute national need for major research in that field of technology. The joint venture, to a large extent, represents a response to the extremely successful Japanese centers already established in that field and signifies an appreciation on the part of those American industries that their leadership in computers and information-processing systems will depend on their ability to promote research.