MD in Business

sakky
Wed, 17 Aug 2005 01:01:45 +0000

Isn’t there a large number of medical doctors who have never practiced on their own, but they work in businesses, such as consultants for certain high tech companies, such as biotech organizations for example.



I wouldn’t say that there is a LARGE number. But there certainly are a number of such people.

It’s not just about being consultants for high-tech companies like biotechs and pharmaceutical companies. Many biotech/pharma executive officers are MD’s. Granted, a lot of them also have PhD’s (hence, they did MD/PhD’s).

http://www.amgen.com/about/leadership_team_roger_perlmutter.html
http://www.gene.com/gene/about/management/exec/desmond-hellman.jsp
http://www.genzyme.com/corp/structure/bios_meeker.asp
http://www.genzyme.com/corp/structure/bios_moscicki.asp
Who we are - Merck.com;

However, what I am saying is that if you just want to have a career in business, I don’t know that bothering with an MD degree is the best way to go about it. After all, while the above links demonstrate that clearly some people with medical degrees advance to high executive positions, the fact is, the management of those companies are still dominated by people who are not medical doctors… I’ll put it to you this way. Of all the big pharmaceutical companies out there, the CEO’s of only a few of them are medical doctors. And even many, if not most biotechs are headed by people who are not medical doctors. The point is, if you just want a management career, even with a biotech or a pharmaceutical company, it’s probably more efficient to just go work there right after undergrad and try to rise to management, or perhaps after getting your MBA. Getting there by way of a medical degree is a rather roundabout way of doing things.