William Haseltine, founder of Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq:HGSI - News) and one of the most visible spokesmen for the promise of biotechnology, used to talk about a new era in medicine in which tailor-made gene-based products would replace drugs and “regenerative medicine” based on biotech research would result in a dramatically increased human lifespan. Haseltine, who left the company he founded last year, stated in a recent interview with Fortune magazine: “I see great inefficiencies in pharma and biotech firms. We have all these opportunities but insufficient structures to pursue them.” Because biotech was supposed to save big pharmaceutical companies by providing new drugs and new compounds for development, Haseltine’s switch from selling the biotech century to grouping firms in the industry with the bureaucracy of big pharma is another arrow in the side of the biotech investor. Investors in biotech ETFs have paid the price, and continue to pay the price, for what is starting to look like the death of a dream.
