Alternative Career With Law Degree?

Q: I am in the final year of a Biomedical Sciences degree and have applied for medicine. I am currently researching alternative career options if I do not get into medicine. I choose biomedical sciences as a degree because I did not get the grades to do medicine straight away. Some of my degree topics are immunology, endocrinology, genetics, anatomy, neuropharmacology, molecular virology, biosynthesis and metabolism. I do not want to work as a lab tech or do research as it does not offer the social aspect that I want. Can anyone suggest any alternative careers other than working in a laboratory.

A:Not sure exactly what you mean by an alternative career. You could do something like science or medical publishing or journalism. I left academic research to go into medical writing and publishing. There are lots of different career paths for this sort of thing; many different types of medical writing, if you have strong writing skills (everything from consumer journalism to pharmaceutical tecnical writing and everything in between). If not, you could still work at say a journal or medical magazine. At least in the US, your background would be good for that sort of job, and I imagine it would be in the UK also. Pharma sales reps often have life-sciences backgrounds, like a bachelor's degree in biology. Although not necessarily... a lot of them pick up the technical information they need on the job, and the pharma companies do pretty intensive training for their reps when

they launch a new drug. Another possibility for an alternative career for the original poster is to work for the companies that do pharma sales force training. There are dozens of them in the US and a growing number of them in Europe. If you think you are interested in some sort of pharma-related career, try to get your hands on a publication called the "Pharmaceutical Marketers Directory." It will give you some idea of the many different possibilities there are in this area, although it is not easy to find. The product managers are sometimes people who have come up through sales, although often they are people with marketing or business degrees or work experience.