OK, it’s has been a couple of weeks since the latest pharma debacle – you know, the one with the $2.3 billion fine being levied. Over that time I’ve asked myself repeatedly what it is about our industry’s ethos that seems so difficult for almost all of us to understand? Our collective mission is to discover, develop, and sell safe, effective medicines that help patients overcome disease. Implicit to this is our duty to educate both healthcare providers and patients in a clear, concise fashion. Simple, right? And once upon a time, profitable enough, too. But along the way, a new “mission” crept in that seems to have affected pharma marketers en masse. Call it pushing the envelope, or sailing close to the wind, or whatever. That has certainly been the mission of the advertising industry.
The company at the center of the storm was fined for violating the spirit and article of regulations that specifically prohibit attempts to use egregious means to entice physicians to prescribe their product. I believe that “egregious means” would include luxury resort weekends of golf or skiing. It would also include payments or honoraria for work or effort that is not in a consultant, speaker, or research capacity. Egregious also encompasses operating on the fringes of labeling or making claims with limited support. And across the industry, I doubt there are many pharma marketers who haven’t tried one sort or another “egregious mean” to some degree in striving to boost their sales—often just to meet targets set by those higher up who really should have known better and were complicit in these activities.
Unfortunately, while such practices are no longer as endemic as they once were, the industry’s reputation is still periodically besmirched by egregious means with reports generally on the front page amplified by web 2.0 communication. There are the glossy sales and promotional materials that tell partial stories and the sales representatives who have to keep a straight face while delivering messages such as, “You know, doctor, my product is best for every patient with this disease.” The wasteful gimmicks and premium items that the industry only recently and reluctantly gave up. Perhaps most damaging of all has been the willingness of so many of us to promote our products just a little outside of the approved labeling. When sales representatives are given materials and directives to discuss (read “promote”) products beyond their approved uses, the tragic case cited above shows that some patients might actually die because of this illegal activity.
Who gets the short end of the stick in this mélange of deceit, cheating, poor judgment and circumvented ethics? You guessed it – the physician prescriber, the patient, the third party payer and you and me – the taxpayer. And there is wonderment that trust in the pharmaceutical industry got to such an all time low!
So I ask myself, when will our industry produce a counter-flood of those who have the courage, morale fortitude and common sense to stand up and denounce this constant BS? When will we all step forward and promise to conduct our business in a responsible and forthright fashion? Take active steps to rebuild the lost trust of their customers through transparent communication, honesty and clarity? Faith will only be restored when all companies once again train and send their representatives into the physician’s office with a firm commitment to bring true value and meaningful interaction to the prescriber. And when advertising agencies become skilled at making conservative pitches as interesting and compelling as the inflated ones.
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