Karen Katen, Pfizer

Doing well in business to do "good" for the world
Karen Katen, president of Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals, admires the philosophy behind the education provided by Fairfield University and the Charles F. Dolan School of Business.

"You're here to learn two basic things: how to do 'good' and how to do well," she said to the students in the audience of the 4th Annual Charles F. Dolan Lecture on Nov. 10. "To do a lot of good, you have to do really well."

That's not a popular view, particularly when pharmaceutical companies have come under fire for making profits and for the cost of their drugs, said Katen, who is also executive vice president of Pfizer Inc. and is a member of the Pfizer Leadership Team. Some people believe healthcare has no business being a business, and that profit promotes corruption, she said.

"I don't believe for a minute that profit corrupts the pharmaceutical industry," Katen said. "Quite the opposite. Profit attracts revenues, it fuels invention and innovation, it improves medical care, and it improves medical outcomes." The cost of a pill is still far less than the cost of being ill or having surgery, she said.

To do good work, companies need sustainable funding. As in any business, profits attract investors. The rewards you offer investors have to match the risk. "And there is no riskier business than ours," she said.

Katen used two stories to illustrate her point: The first concerned the accidental discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 that would take until the 1940s for Howard Florey and Ernest Chain to uncover the research and, with the help and resources of Pfizer, commercially produce the first antibiotic. The second story was about a promising drug that Pfizer scientists thought could help the body build muscle. Every step of the way, the research findings looked promising, until it was tested in humans. Researchers found that it made no difference. After spending 10 years and more than a half-billion dollars, they ended the unsuccessful project, a huge personal and professional defeat for the people involved and the company.

"The stories tell you that creating medicine is very hard and very expensive," she said. "We can't rely on happy accidents. It takes time, it takes dedicated research, and it takes money to advance our work."

Pfizer, the world's largest private biomedical research company, spends more than $25 million each day on research and development, Katen said. "The bottom line is that the pharmaceutical industry invested more money into medical research than all the government and private foundations," she added. "That's honorable. That allows us to make lives better."

Helping people is the company's mission, said Katen. Its success has allowed it to provide charitable health programs around the globe. Pfizer is dedicated to eradicating trachoma, a contagious eye infection that causes blindness, and is commonly found in northern African countries. Pfizer is providing the medicine and funding the cost of preventing the spread of the disease. By next year, the company expects to eliminate trachoma in Morocco, and have other countries follow.

"Some people say that doing well and doing good simply do not fit together," Katen said. "We know that's not true."

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