At a CRO – we are the “outsourced” drug research division of the pharma companies. I’ve been doing this for close to 10 years now. I can tell you that the ONLY reason for my job, or my company to exist in the first place, is because of FDA red tape. There is no other reason. My personal billable rate is $150/hour – and I’ll spend no less than 300 hours on any individual project – and I’m only a single cog in a bigger machine – a machine that has billable rates much higher than mine. Whats even more pathetic is that we do it cheaper than the pharmas themselves can do it themselves for.

So the next time someone tells you that government doesn’t create jobs – I laugh and say “the only reason I pull in a paycheck is because the FDA makes pharmaceutical companies’ existence miserable” (They make my life miserable too)