The Ebola crisis highlights a more general problem.

If someone is dying from a disease for which there is no proven treatment, it is ridiculous to say: "You cannot have this unproven treatment. It might kill you." Common sense dictated that experimental medication was justified for health workers who contracted the Ebola virus, given that the death rate if untreated was of the order of 50-80 per cent. It seems to work and there is hope that larger quantities will be available soon.

The existence of a potential Ebola treatment was presumably the result of academic studies aimed at understanding the disease, since there was no prospect of making a profit from the poor Africans who were at risk. The same situation prevails throughout academic medicines research. Research in universities produces promising results but the best outcome that can be expected is for the research team to publish their results in a journal with a high-impact factor, which helps their careers.

Progress from lab to market is impossible, given the insistence on years of clinical trials that pushes costs up to the multi-million dollar levels, ruling out a financial return for the investor.

It has not always been like this. Fifty years ago, it was possible to get a new drug to market at a fraction of present costs. Many failed at an early stage but, despite the relative lack of pre-market testing, there were very few examples of a new treatment causing a disaster.

In my lifetime most of the companies looking for new medicines in the UK have gone out of business or been swallowed by amalgamation. All had innovative research teams and most produced at least one successful medicine. We now have GSK and AstraZeneca plus a number of research-only private labs too small to carry a project to the clinic. Why?

Two factors combine to exert the greatest pressure on "Big Pharma". The first is the introduction of stringent testing regulations, particularly in the United States, intended to protect the consumer. In practice, the human body is so complex and variable that it is impossible to achieve complete safety. Practolol, a second generation beta-blocker, went through an exhaustive trial process but, when marketed, caused some very unpleasant side-effects. In the US, such a failure will be followed by aggressive litigation that may result in the award of penal damages.

The second factor is the enormous profit when a company makes a blockbuster. The price to the patient can be set at a high level, to cover the cost of development and pay investors. If the profits last for a number of years it is expected that a proportion will be re-invested in research. But finding another blockbuster cannot be guaranteed and the sheer size of the research effort becomes unsupportable, hence the need to amalgamate and the formation of Allenbury/Glaxo/ Beecham/SmithKline, known as GSK.

Is it unreasonable to suggest not-for-profit organisations might be entrusted with the task of finding clinically useful medicines for diseases that at present have no hope? Much of the basic research has been done and lies untouched in the annals of chemistry, biochemistry and pharmacology. The cost of preparing larger quantities of material is tiny compared to the years of clinical trial required. The motivation would be two-fold, to relieve the suffering of people with "orphan" diseases and to establish a research reputation. The informed consent of the patient would be paramount, as would protection of the researchers from American-style litigation if something went wrong. Experience fsuggests that bad outcomes will be rare, particularly when the clinicians are fully aware that the medicine has not been shown to be safe. One problem with the Big Pharma high-cost, mega-test approach is that GPs become complacent, assuming that everything has been done. No drug is ever entirely safe; think of aspirin.

The way things are going, it is not inconceivable that the UK could be left without a pharmaceutical industry. It is difficult to persuade an industry that relies on profit to do even basic research into new antibiotics because the returns are not sufficient. Are we content to let the whole process of developing medicines go the same way as the British motorcycle industry?