The man Pfizer loves to hate is profiled in Fortune magazine….

“Trained as a physician in his native Sweden, Rost has worked in the drug industry for most of the past 20 years. He almost certainly never will again. The blog, then, is perhaps Rost’s toughest marketing job ever. The product: Dr. Peter Rost. On the site he also hawks T-shirts, coffee mugs, and postage stamps emblazoned with his own square-jawed Nordic visage. Married with two children, Rost hopes that Question Authority (his blog) will help him create a new career. “I’m knitting a parachute,” he says, “as I see the ground coming closer and closer…”

Is Rost a gadfly looking for a cause? Or is he a guardian, protecting consumers from unethical drug companies? Actually, he is both. His zeal is real; it is also sometimes excessive. Even his critics admit that when Rost is on his game, he is a force to be reckoned with. And he is part of a larger phenomenon that is forcing Big Pharma into a new era of accountability. For better or worse, the drug industry is going to have to get used to Dr. Peter Rost - and others like him.”

One mistake Fortune made in its article - in discussing Rost and the AstraZeneca scandal, the magazine asserts the mainstream press followed the trail. In fact, except for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Delaware News-Journal, the mainstream press missed the boat. The blogs, Rost and just a few others, including this one, forced big pharma to come to grips with this new medium.

You can read it here.