George Rathmann Interview (page: 8 / 9) Founding Chairman, Amgen	Print Interview

Do you think there's a problem for the biotech companies, and for the quality of research if everything is made public?

George Rathmann: Oh no, I haven't an argument about making research public. The argument is about making rights belong to other people. If you transfer rights to Tony Blair, so that no matter what we've done here, they have the same rights and the same ownership, the same intellectual property ownership, that would be a devastating step.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The communication of scientific information is a beautiful part of our whole scientific system. What people don't realize, it's a beautiful part of the patent system because when you file a patent application, you must put in there every detail, to make it possible for the person who gets that patent, or reads that patent, to be able to -- he's got to be enabled to do everything you say. You have to be more explicit than in a publication, because in a publication you can kind of leave out something, because you think that I'd like to maybe stay ahead of my competition here for a while, and I won't mention that they better have humidity less than five percent. I'll just leave that out. And people sometimes do that. I don't think it's a great plan, but there are things that don't necessarily have to be included. But in the patent application, if there's something left out, the patent is invalid. Now what does that mean? The patent is filed with a complete disclosure, and it's published 18 to 20 months later. So anybody in the world can read that information. It's accessible to them. So the patent system is perfectly compatible with having the information flow. And that doesn't just apply to biotech, that applies to everything. What is not compatible with the way we do things in this country is to say, "We're going to make you give those things away. We don't believe you should own the gene. We don't believe you should own a protein. We don't believe you should own a medicine. We don't believe you should own a therapeutic or a diagnostic. We think those things are terrible because you charge money for them, and we like to have them free. So we don't believe in the ownership of these things." That's very hard for me, because I don't know how you'd proceed to get these things done.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It costs $500 million to get a product approved by the FDA. Do you want to spend that kind of money knowing that as soon as you finish and you've proved that it works, anybody in the world anywhere can make that product and sell it into the marketplace? You just can't do it. You won't ever spend the $500 million. At the end of it, it's a very hard ethical call. After erythropoietin was found, and we beat the world to get to the erythropoietin molecule, there was a judge in Boston who said, "I want to see as many erythropoietin producers as I can. I'm interested in the public welfare here." Well, that's interesting. So you'd say, almost, the patent system opposes the public welfare because the patent system does not permit all the manufacturers in the world. It limits it to the person who made the discovery. But there's an interesting cycle there. If no one has the motivation to make the discovery, who's going to make the discovery? So after you have the discovery, it may seem like a very generous humanitarian thing to do is to have everybody get the discovery free of charge. But you've got to watch out of what the impact of that decision is on the rate of discovery of new things. So it's a very complicated story. It always sounds kind of bad. It sounds kind of like it's greed, and it doesn't sell well. But a slowly improving understanding by the public would be a very desirable thing. They ought to really understand the creation of products that link very closely to the creation of knowledge, and it's a hard distinction. When you create knowledge, it's a wonderful thing, and it should be free to everybody. When you start creating products that require a significant investment, it's another ballgame.

You've said that you have had trouble retiring.

George Rathmann: I really haven't taken it very seriously. That's the reason. I think I could do the job if I put my mind to it!

When you left Amgen was the purpose to retire?

George Rathmann: It was to disengage. I didn't assume I'd ever be totally retired. When I resigned as CEO, I stayed on as chairman. But when I resigned as CEO, I thought I'd probably find myself involved, to a much less degree, with a lot of companies, but before I resigned as Chairman of Amgen, I had already been appointed as Chairman of ICOS. So it seemed appropriate that the right way to retire would be to have chairman jobs, instead of the whole CEO job and have that in two companies. That seemed about ideal. I had already decided I didn't want to be on ten boards. A lot of our board members were almost professional board members, and they loved it. Ten boards, they got ten different stimuli and all the rest of that. But I found that to be a little too superficial for my thinking. I'd rather have a more intense involvement. I knew I couldn't afford to be president and CEO of many companies. That's a big job. That's a full-time job. But chairman of two companies sounded fine with me. So that was my plan. And Amgen agreed, and ICOS agreed. So now I was chairman of both companies. That lasted for five months.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We had a very successful private round of financing at ICOS, including attracting Bill Gates to put in $5 million. And we raised $33 million. The people in the banking area, Paine Webber, made it very clear, after that was done, that I had to resign from the job I had at Amgen, because people were skeptical that after making this investment, that I was going to be able to devote enough time to the company. I tried to say, "Well, you know, being on the board and Chairman of Amgen is not a big responsibility. It's run by the CEO. You have to understand that." But there was a lot of pressure. So I approached Amgen and said, "Well, it was very nice of you to allow me to do both, but I can't do both." And they said, "Well, you're the boss. If you say you don't want to do it, we'll find a way to handle it, but we'd like you to stay." And I said, "I just can't do it." So I left the Board -- I left the chairmanship -- I did stay on the board for a couple more years, and then I was exclusively ICOS. Then, when it came time to look at this latest retirement... I retired from ICOS in a sense as a retirement, knowing full well by that time that there was another tiny little biotech company that I really would like to help, and that was Hyseq. So I told them that before I even resigned. I was out of a job for a half an hour. The ICOS board meeting occurred and finished, and I was no longer there, and the Hyseq board meeting started a half-hour later, and I got in and was appointed Chairman. That recently changed over to become President and CEO. It's easy to be a President, Chairman and CEO. That's not hard. It's hard to do two companies... and I was fairly aware that I'd probably end up with a change. So I knew I probably should just resign at ICOS, and I did. I actually resigned from the board at the same time. So I really am not associated with ICOS anymore.

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