Angie Drakulich

The growing consortium is very similar to a model for third-party shared audits of active pharmaceutical ingredient suppliers run by the European Chemical Industry Council's Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Committee.

But is industry really willing to join in the sharing game? We're all taught to share from an early age, but somewhere along the line, we get caught up in competition and slowly decrease our eagerness to confide in peers. Competition is important—it is the foundation of our economy—and in the field of science, intellectual property rights and company proprietary information require individuals to remain private about the details of their work. But perhaps this hiding of information has gone too far. There must be a way industry can learn to share without giving up all its trade secrets.

Angie Drakulich is the managing editor of Pharmaceutical Technology.