Thats not true. A person with a BS will enter genentech at 60k. With a PhD you can easily start at 110k. If you are employed in biotech/pharma with a phd, you can very easily make 6 figs.
Sorry to burst your fantasy bubble, but that's not the salaries offered at biotech companies nowadays. Starting at 110k for a PhD? I think not, and the only people I knew who were paid that much were the highest Senior Group Directors (around 125k) or the very top management positions. But most definitely--I repeat, most definitely--not for a PhD entry job person. If you don't believe someone who's been there, I don't know what else to say. If you are just pulling this off the web, then you must also believe that orthos on average make "only" 140k--these statistics are notoriously skewed and unreal.
A BS entering Genentech will not be making 60k either. Perhaps something like 45k (as a research associate) with benefits, and eventually, say after about 10-15 years (assuming he/she stays employed), will top off at 80k. Note that this is actually very good for a BA and at most biotech companies, BA's and Masters will have a LOT easier time finding a job than PhDs, who are overabundant from endogenous production and also, equally, from the flood of Chinese/Indian scientists. Now, a really good job for B.A.'s would be in sales--for some reason most companies pay their sales force ridiculously high for what they do.
People have this misconception that if you can get a job at Pharma/Biotech you'd strike it rich. Nothing can be further from the truth. This kind of misconception started back around 2000 when the human genome was getting fully sequenced and all of a sudden, very irrationally I might add, people started thinking that we have all we need to solve biomedical problems. The truth cannot be more disconnected. Science is not a simple matter of pumping X dollars into Y projects and you get Z drugs. If that were the case, considering the amount of funding we have had for cancer and HIV, these diseases would have been history already. The reality is that to make real inroads in biomedical science, and ultimately a feasible drug, requires at least 15-20 years of research, clinical trials, and tests. This is the way Science works, so inherently there is nothing wrong with that--except that when you consider form an employment and financial point of view, it's definitely not a bedrock of stability for its labor force.
Here is a recent article if you want to read about the state of the biotech industry:
www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2009/01/19/Biotech-Boom-Finally-Peters-Out
Basically, the so-called "Biotech Century" that was predicted at the turn of the millenium is essentially gone. Investors are looking to make money, not to keep pouring billions of cash into a field that, up to now, has generated nothing but deficits and failed expectations. For the actual scientists involved, all of this simply means that a career in biomedical research may not be the wisest choice if financial compensation and employment stability is involved (which is why I got out and am willing to put up with more schooling for a different career). Like I said before, the average time span for a biotech job is about two years. In a small startup company, this is just about the burn rate of the initial VC funds before it either goes belly-up (90%) of the time, or until it gets bought out by a bigger company (who will most likely "streamline" staff anyways). In a larger company, funding and outsourcing issues produce the same instability. Ever noticed how so many pharma companies are moving shutting down their U.S. plants and moving them to China and India? There are hordes of foreign scientists there willing to work for cheaper and the drug development regulations there are more lax.
Getting a biotech job is also an extremely taxing business. Often times it has nothing to do with merit, but the so-called "internal references," meaning networking with friends and brownosing a lot of butt. To make things worse, because of the PhD glut many times you will be pressured into taking an underemployment offer, like a well-qualified PhD taking an industry postdoc job (around 45k) or a Research Associate job that is really intended for Masters people (because of a lack of PhD positions). And when you are (and you will) be laid off, you'd be competing with legions of other people, including fresh graduates, people moving laterally (i.e. fired as well), foreign scientists willing to work for a Green Card, etc. In my mind, this does not compare favorably with Dentistry. Even if the field gets "socialized" to a certain extent like medicine or in saturated areas, dentists can still make a modestly lucrative living and most of all, a stable existence.
In short, I think that it is ridiculous comparing the relative employment merits of a biomedical PhD vs. that of a DDS. It's not even close. Do science only if you can't think of anything else to do with your life. If you are looking for a well-paid career, that's the last place you'd want to go. Use some common sense here: Why else do you think people are willing to take out 200-300k in loans just to be a dentist? From a financial standpoint, this is simply a very sound investment for one's financial future, because dentistry is a well-compensated field. On the flip side, why do you think biomedical PhD programs have stipends and financial support? To put it bluntly, they need to do this to rope people in. Anytime an education is subsidized, take it as a sign that there is something really wrong with it. Otherwise, why would they do it?
