Harvard s connection to drug companies goes much deeper than simply owning stock. As we ve seen, a significant part of the drug companies business is developing treatments for diseases. The first step in that process is biomedical research. It s a win-win situation for Harvard and the companies. Harvard gets outside money to support research, which improves its research programs and makes it more attractive to prospective faculty, students, and alumni.
Corporations also get access to a new pool of promising researchers.
Federal funds are by far the most generous, providing some three quarters of all sponsored research money at Harvard. All of the corporations among the top 30 research sponsors in 1999 were in the medical industry, and all but one were pharmaceutical companies. This pattern suggests that the vast majority of total corporate sponsored research is biomedical and funded by pharmaceutical companies. Perhaps as important as direct funding is cooperation between Harvard and drug companies researchers. These collaborations provide another way for drug companies to get access to Harvard s pool of researchers and to its credibility.