In trying to make sense of the flood of info on the Internet about Avandia, The New York Times’ David Carr asked Pharmalot, among others, for insight into why big pharma is such a polarizing force that prompts some to demonize the industry. This is an excerpt from the article, which appears today…

Part of the reason that the drug companies end up coming off as cartoon villains is that they have been known to act like them, said Ed Silverman, who covers the industry for The Star-Ledger (of New Jersey), and writes a blog called Pharmalot.

“There is a thread here that continues, that collectively the industry has failed to anticipate and react to the problems (like) Avandia,” he said. “Glaxo has put some ads out and put out a few key executives for interviews, but things move a lot faster now than they used to.”

During our conversation, I suggested that crisis management doesn’t work so well anymore, not when the Internet offers two key things - instananeous access to all sorts of news and commentary, and an archive that makes it easier to probe the past. There’s an old expression in journalism - the reader doesn’t keep a clipbook. With the Internet, that’s not true anymore. Now, the industry’s collective foibles are recalled and rehashed with a few key strokes. Avandia underscores the issue by making it easier to thumb through several safety scandals over the past decade.