History of ARCS

How it all began

Extract from THE HISTORY OF ARCS 1984 – 2002 Anthea Steans

Winner – Osmond Russell Scholarship 2002

This history is dedicated to the many men and women who volunteer their services to the various committees of ARCS. Without them, the Association wouldn’t be the hugely successful professional body that it is today.

The year was 1984 and the regulatory environment in Australia was challenging to say the least. Registration of medicines (whether OTC or prescription) took up to 5 years for approval, there was little if any dialogue between the industry and the health authorities and clinical trials were almost non-existent due to the extensive requirements for approval.

Several large pharmaceutical companies had medically qualified directors heading up the medical departments, however there was a growing trend to appoint non-medical PhD scientists to these positions. This was the situation for a number of large drug companies (e.g. Syntex, Astra, Janssen-Cilag, Sandoz etc). The medically qualified heads of these departments belonged to their own Medical Directors industry association (variously called AMDAPI, MDAA, APPA ). Only members of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) qualified to be members of AMDAPI, hence excluding Ph.D - qualified Directors of Medical Departments. Unfortunately, for the rest of the scientifically qualified personnel in our Industry, it was AMDAPI who were usually engaged in policy dialogue with the Health Department. Any new policy developed by this process usually did not reverse the difficulties encountered by “hands-on” scientific staff within the industry. Furthermore communication of agreements reached about revisions to policies (via this process) to other scientifically qualified personnel was abysmal to say the least. This situation was obviously unacceptable to the “hands-on” scientific personnel who strived to meets the needs of the TGA.

After many unsuccessful attempts to persuade AMDAPI to accept non-medically qualified scientific personnel as members, I believe it was over coffee one day, that five Ph.D – qualified heads of medical departments (but who did not hold medical degrees) agreed to form an association for clinical and regulatory personnel working in the pharmaceutical industry. They decided to “launch” a new association by sending an invitation to regulatory/clinical departments in the Australian pharmaceutical industry to attend its inaugural meeting. In doing so, it aroused a serious concern with the CEO of the APMA (at the time it was Mr. Kerry Bell) and with the CEOs of various companies. APMA was the Australian Pharmaceutical Manufacturer’s Association, the forerunner to Medicines Australia whose members were the various companies involved in pharmaceutical manufacturing, sales and marketing in Australia. Mr Bell’s preliminary suspicion was that such an association would take on a union-type role and particularly remuneration issues and this would not be in the interest of the member companies.

After several meetings with Mr Bell and members of the APMA board, the founding members of ARCS convinced them that the prime objectives for the association were to enhance education and communications for scientific personnel in the Industry, which would enhance the efficiency of scientific staff employed by member companies. Furthermore, the founding members offered to add the words “..to the Australian Pharmaceutical Industry” to whatever name we chose for the Association to confirm our Association’s commitment to the APMA and its member companies. These matters having been resolved, it cleared the way for the Inaugural Meeting to occur. To the founding members’ surprise 74 people turned up to that first meeting, and so ARCS was born. The five ‘Founding Fathers’ were Dr Philip Altman, Dr Peter Isaac, Dr Colin Reddrop, Dr Zeke Solomon and Dr Phil Whyatt all of whom were awarded Life Membership of ARCS in 2001.

It didn’t take very long before a structure emerged with Zeke Solomon being elected the first President and the others forming the Council including the roles of Treasurer and Registrar. Volunteers were quickly found to support the various subcommittees such as the Education Subcommittee, the Communications and External Liaison Subcommittee. Everyone pitched in to help and the secretaries of the companies became invaluable for sending out mailings, finding venues for events and generally supporting the association.

A competition was held amongst members to choose a name for the new association as well as to design a logo. Monica Griffiths from Astra submitted the winning entry and the name chosen by Council was the “The Association of Regulatory and Clinical Scientists to the Australian Pharmaceutical Industry” with a logo showing a rainbow over a stylised map of Australia with the name ARCS in the middle.

...and so ARCS began...