As I indicated, I loved the medicine and the science and I agree with you about R & D (pre-clinical and clinical). What I hated were the commercial guys twisting the truth AND frequently breaking the law! Off-label promotion has practically become the standard in Big Pharma. This is particularly agregious when there are safety implications for patients. I’ve seen it happen. They even hide it from the medical and regulatory teams and go behind their backs with secret marketing and sales tactics that they develop and sell to senior management.

Please let us all know the URL of YOUR pharma blog, as we are eager to hear “the other side” of the story.

Best wishes,
Susan

I disagree with some of the content you choose to present and I disagree with the way some of them are presented (titles in particular). However, you are correct. I didn’t really do my “due diligence” before speaking. When it comes to interviews, you ask balanced question from both sides of the table. I can only assume that you do the same when you are writing.

Overall, your site is very informative. Donna, you are correct — it certainly has given me the ability to see things from “the other side of the table” from time to time.

CV MD, I don’t know what pharma company you came from, but I sure hope I don’t buy drugs from them. I’m a early stage scientist (pre-clinical trial) at a major pharma company. I can tell you that in my “neck of the woods”, there is nothing but honesty and good intentions. However, I will readily admit that I have no control and limited knowledge of what happens to my inventions when they reach the clinical stage of development.

Who are you? head of PR for a Big Big Pharma company? The industry has quite a large amount of corruption in the commercial area, from the head honchos on down. Physicians and scientists in pharma try to keep things on the right side, but many face dire consequences for doing so. If you question anything, you are disloyal and dislodged. The Big Pharma companies have made their bed and now must lie in it. The only industry more reviled by the population at large is Big Oil. has Big Pharma done good things/ Absolutely! Do they do a lot of bad things? Definitely! Ed and many others simply want to offer a broad view as to what’s going on. If you want all sugar, then read the companies’ press releases. If you want lots of important issues, then check Pharmalot. Don’t be defensive as it’s probably not you. It’s more the people that run the commercial show. They just can’t help themselves and their getting some of their due.

BP MD

PS: Been there, done that. I loved it because of the medicine and science, but also hated it because my oath, my ethics and my principles were repeatedly attacked by extremely disgusting marketing and sales tactics that are repeated over and over and over again by some very bad apples in the industry.

Let’s see Motrin worked better on my children’s fever’s then tylenol, counted on it every time they did’nt feel well, Zocor thankgod keep’s my dad’s cholesterol in check, with his hypertension and all, coumidin keep’s my mom well after having valve replacement..she also take’s Phenobarbital because of seizure’s,from mini stroke’s leading up to the biggie..i have a cousin who’s a heart transplant recipient and live’s on drug’s ?? well to live…and i could go on with it all just in my little world, but there’s the flip side,i have a dear friend who became very depressed after the passing of his mom, went to his doctor was given samples of wellbutrin to try, mind you no literiture accomanied this med, felt ok for about 7 week’s and one morning while driving to work went to the nearest hospital and checked himself in…why..he said his skin felt like it was crawling…and something was’nt right..he was in the hospital for two day’s on no med’s and a DR. see’s him and say’s he should’nt be on Wellbutrin told him about suicide side effect’s and how bad it was then put’s him on Cymbalta, now i’m not a DR. but first thing i thought was that he was’nt weaned off the first drug and does it matter, guess not 2 week’s later he’s in the hospital feeling almost the same way he did the first time and they double his med’s and that was 10 day’s ago all i know is that he’s now just easily aggitated and overwelmed tryinging to run his business, struggling is how his wife put’s it…and she walk’s on eggshell’s around him not to rock the boat, then there’s my nephew while seperated from his wife was prescribed an antidepressant and i don’t know what it was i do know he stopped taking it maybe that was what caused him to hang himself in the bathroom doorway, maybe cause he was’nt weaned off or maybe he could’nt stand being on it. that we’ll never know…I’m not a Pharma Basher I know both side’s and i think everyone should………

I don’t think you have to hunt. There are always interesting items out there, and I try to find as many as I can. Yes, some are about misdeeds, and there have been several of late. But there were other types of items as well.

As an example - I wrote a few posts recently about problems with IMS data. Is that an industry misdeed? I don’t think so. But that’s of interest to a segment of the universe, and there was that tension I mentioned earlier, and so I followed it.

You haven’t mentioned the Provenge controversy. The issue there is FDA policy and procedures, at least as some see it, and the dilemma over experimental meds. I’ve written many posts about that topic, which I don’t believe would be confused with misdeeds or a negative outlook about the potential for medicines. Type Provenge in the search box. You won’t have to look very hard at all.

I posted recently about the depature of the Pfizer vice chairman and attempted to explain some of the reasoning behind that decision. For better or worse, that was a widely read item (especially since there was a Biogen angle involved). Misdeeds? Nope. Just inside baseball at a big company. I enjoy that as much as any kind of post. I think others do, as well.

Last week, I ran a post about a consulting firm report that offered an outlook on pharma careers, which was another widely read post. And almost every week - either Wed or Thurs morning - I post an item about people who have moved from one job to another. Why? Because people like to know what’s going on in their own company or at rivals or they’re interested in a name they recognize. Misdeeds? No.

Perhaps what you’re detecting is that I tend to focus on the business side of life - Wall Street views, legislation, litigation, patents, employee matters - because I’ve been a business journalist, primarily. I am trying to encompass more health or science items, at least when I recognize them and when I believe they are pertinent to the site. This may explain the reason you see some material more than others. But I am not adverse to running such things. In fact, I have frequently run items based on medical studies. And the ‘Pharmalot, Pharmalittle’ section often has links to wire stories about health issues and study results (granted, these are not full posts, but I include them because I know they may be of interest).

Like it or not, you work in an industry - and I follow an industry - that has been rife with controversy. I agree that the good and important work shouldn’t be obscured. By the same token, I believe the misdeeds, as you put it, are worth noting, at least those that speak to the issues that can stand some improvement. Then, perhaps, it would be possible to learn from mistakes - and everyone can focus more on the good that the industry does.

But those are my two cents, adjusted for trade and budget deficits. I look forward to your thoughts.

Cheers,

ed at Pharmalot

with all due respect- advertising, public relations and a host of tertiary other organizations are multi-billion, million dollar industries due to pharma patting itself on the back. i think you miss the far larger picture when all you do is industry cheerleading–because there is some work to be done in every industry and unfortunatley due to the nature of products which mean life or death for many pharma has a stronger burden to bear in that area than say Microsoft. Instead of taking Ed to task for pointing out the issues perhaps the question should be why are they such issues to begin with- $400,000 a year for a sales rep when the average physician call lasts 13 minutes? Obviously that adds a great deal to the “cost of medicine” and perhaps more responsible stewardship of the public trust and actual operating costs would get pharma out of a great deal of trouble?

Did you take Ed’s advice and archive some of the past topic’s I think not…back to the real world when the shit hit’s the fan it’s alway’s hard for some to swallow, all of of us on here know the good that medicine does, we have all been cured of something because of medicine, we all know someone who is still alive because of medicine no one is denying that, your missing the point and taking side’s yourself, we are entitled to know the bad as well, and I think Ed is fair on both side”s……..