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BRIAN DEER:
HARD SELL Page 1
The
Sunday Times (London) February 27 1994
Were
you to travel to central London and stand outside the
seven-story building at 183 Euston Road, you wouldn't
think, to look at it, that you were close to anything
of note. The structure's white Portland stone facade
and Greek-columned central pavilion are reminiscent
of nothing more memorable than, say, a US courthouse,
or a downsized Bank of England. The external
elevations are self-important but unimaginative. To
set eyes on them once is to forget them.
But
if you sneaked through the revolving front door and
up 12 cold steps to the lobby, you would find
yourself in elegant spaces that shout most loudly of
money. Number 183 Euston Road is the creation of the
late Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome, perhaps the premier
architect of the modern pharmaceutical industry, and
the builders didn't skimp on the job.
On
the day it opened in 1932 (only four years before
Henry died), it was a point of distinction that no
wood or cheap metals should be visible to the
visitor's eye. The floors and walls were of fine
imported marbles, the doors and windows exclusively
of bronze. It was all to the taste of a president, or
king. A style to suit the man.
The
interior's grandeur does perfect justice to 183's
extraordinary role. This building is the headquarters
of the Wellcome Trust, the world's richest private
medical research foundation, with assets of more than
£10 billion. It is the wealthiest British charity,
declaring assets twice as great as the Church of
England commissioners. From here the trust controls
Wellcome plc, a top multinational drug company. And,
through that company, it controls Burroughs Wellcome,
its United States offshoot, and the charitable
Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
From
these companies and charities, through grants and
sponsorships, government agencies, universities,
hospitals and scientists are influenced all over the
world. The trust distributes more money to
institutions than even the British government's
Medical Research Council.
In
offices on the building's first floor, decisions are
reached that affect lives and health on scales
comparable with minor wars. In the conference room,
high above the street, and in the meeting hall, in
the basement, rulings in biotechnology and genetics
are handed down that will help shape the human race.
If
all of this is news to you, then some Wellcome
products may be more familiar. Wellcome plc, which
trades, confusingly, as the Wellcome Foundation (and
which not long ago decamped to a green-glass tower at
160 Euston Road), most notably sells AZT, the
anti-Aids drug, which last year commanded a market of
£248m. More commercially notable is its herpes
treatment, acyclovir, sold as Zovirax, grossing
£760m.
There
are also over-the-counter cough and cold products,
Sudafed and Actifed, which brought in £141m. And
some 50 other treatments, from an antibacterial,
marketed as Septrin, Septra or Septran, to a gout
remedy, allopurinol: Zyloric or Zyloprim. Total sales
revenues are more than £2billion annually. More than
enough to keep the front door spinning.
*****
The
special place of honour at 183, is a shrine to the
founder, in the basement. By the stairs near the
entrance is an oil painting of the man: middle-aged,
with a handlebar moustache. In cabinets to the right
are examples of the merchandise and promotions that
got his empire going. There are personal items, such
as his honours and medals, and his soft-spined,
preacher-style, Bible.
On a
winter evening among these things, you can almost
feel his presence. But if Henry Wellcome lives on -
and in some ways he does - it's in the shape of a
document that his trustees today choose not to place
on display. Soon after he was knighted, by King
George V, and shortly before the building was
officially opened, he knew that he was approaching
the end of his life, and he filed a remarkable will.
With
a lengthy hand-written memorandum, he set out a
framework for how his empire should operate, even
half a century after his death. A copy is held by the
Charity Commission in London, and with the rise in
the wealth and influence of his organisation, they
have become some of medicine's most important
documents.
What
Henry Wellcome set out was a double-edged scheme to
run a business and a charity together. The flagship
would be a philanthropic body - now the Wellcome
Trust - enjoying the image and tax benefits of
magnanimous, public-spirited generosity. But, behind
this would operate "industrial
organisations": straight up-and-down for-profit
corporations. Today these trade under the names of
the Wellcome Foundation Ltd (long wrongly assumed to
be charitable), and its parent, Wellcome plc.
The
scheme was essentially a Masonic contrivance. Henry
Wellcome was a lifelong Freemason. And, despite the
efforts of many among Britain's great and good who
have since administered his affairs on the board of
trustees, so successful was this merging of profit
with charity that it has given a dead man a tighter
grip on medicine than that enjoyed by few who are
alive.
Urging
that there should be "frequent
consultations" between the charitable and the
commercial arms, Henry Wellcome revealed in the
memorandum the scale of his ambitions for his
empire's future. "With the enormous possibility
of development in chemistry, bacteriology, pharmacy
and allied sciences," he predicted, "if my
desires and plans are carried out in the way of
research co-operation with the several industrial
organisations, there are likely to be vast fields
opened for productive enterprise for centuries to
come."
*****
