ABSTRACT
Simmering through the 1970s, a series of key scientific discoveries would serve as the fuse to ignite an explosion of commercial biotechnology developments throughout the 1980s. The micropicture can be viewed through the eyes of the scientists and business people who created Amgen, one of the several hundred biotechnology companies that formed and thrived by selling promises and then making them happen. The pace of biotechnology accelerated as the announcements of the first eight months of 1980 raised awareness throughout the world that something important was happening and the stage was set for the explosive progress which was to follow. In September, the difficult decision was made to pass up the opportunity to build a biotechnology company within Abbott Laboratories. To compete with rapidly expanding budgets of the major biotechnology companies, Amgen doubled its pace of expenditures. A word of explanation is needed about the motives behind such publicity and the problems of credibility that some early announcements have created.
