To:  Company Policy

 We have recently had two major pharmaceutical companies tell us that
 20% was their max.  We indicated to them that we were very interested
 in conducting their trials, both of which would be of mutual clinical
 benefit, but that our rate was 25%.  We were successful in the
 negotiations eventually.  We have to charge 25% to cover costs.

 For point of information, I recently discovered that the
 pharmaceutical companies subscribe to a service which provides a
 central resource of data about each institution in the country which
 does clinical trials.  As soon as you have negotiated your agreement,
 the institutional data from that agreement, such as the indirect cost
 rate, goes into a pool of data which the companies access through this
 service.  Therefore, if you charge Wyeth 20%, the next time you try to
 negotiate with any other company which subscribes to this service,
 they will say "we understand your going rate is 20%".  The old divide
 and conquer policy is working well in the clinical trial arena.

 I invite you to the SRA Annual Meeting in Chicago to attend our
 clinical trials session October 9 wherein this is one of the issues
 which will be addressed.  The Executive Director of Clinical
 Development at Merck has graciously consented to come "in flack
 jacket" to work on breaking down "barriers to partnerships" in
 clinical trials.

 Diane C. Gilbert, CRA
 Director, Research and Training Development
 Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital
 Boston, MA  02114-1198
       xxxxxx@a1.mgh.harvard.edu