Pharmalot… Pharmalittle… A News Round-Up
2 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // December 7th, 2007 // 12:20 pm
Before you head off to that next meeting, lunch appointment or coffee break, now may be a good time to catch up on events. Here are some of the latest….
The Drug Enforcement Administration has suspended Cardinal Health’s license to distribute controlled substances from its Lakeland, Florida, distribution center, the second such suspension in about a week. In both cases - the other occurred in its Auburn, Washington, facility - the DEA says Cardinal failed to maintain effective controls in distributing to retail pharmacies, Reuters writes. The DEA cited the sale of hydrocodone to pharmacies that allegedly dispensed excessive amounts of the pain treatment, based on improper prescriptions from Internet pharmacy Web sites.
Merck will spend as much as $600 million developing medicines in South Korea over the next 10 years, increasing its presence in Asia’s third-largest pharmaceutical market, Bloomberg News reports. The investment plans were announced earlier this week during talks between Merck execs and South Korean trade officials. The U.S. and South Korea reached an accord earlier this year to eliminate tariffs and curb barriers to investment. Pfizer recently said it will spend $300 million on research and development in South Korea by 2012.
In a briefing, AstraZeneca is predicting its MedImmune operation will have at least three new drug candidates in trials by 2010 and hopes to have an average of six new drug applications for submission per year. (You can look at the presentation if you wish).
The outgoing president of Valley City State University in North Dakota has filed a federal lawsuit against Wyeth, charging its hormone therapy drugs caused her to develop breast cancer. Ellen Chaffee says she was diagnosed with breast cancer two months after she quit the Prempro, which she’d taken for about 10 years, in 2002. “What motivates me is holding a corporation responsible for the damage it’s done to potentially thousands and thousands of women,” Chaffee tells the Associated Press.
Adam J Fein
The latest news from Cardinal indicates that the company still doesn’t have a viable system for monitoring diversion by its customers (per the requirement of a December 2006 agreement with then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer). See my blog for more details:
http://www.drugchannels.net/2007/11/cardinal-sins-again.html
Regards,
Adam
Big Pharma Employee
Excerpts from Pill Pushers-A Big Pharma Battle for Market Share- a fictional thriller with an injection of truth.
your boss asking you to break the law only leaves you with two choices. One: Report your manager to the company and, when you do, get ready for all hell to break loose. Two: Start interviewing and get out of there..Fast.
Big pharma had several methods at their disposal to keep anyone under observation at any time. To quote NSD- “We have eyes in our butts.â€
Barrett’s heart raced as he thought of the billions of dollars that would be at risk for the companies with in Big Pharma. Garrett was well aware of the measures that could be taken to prevent his testimony….There were rumor about brave souls who had spoken out against rogue corporations only later to disappear without a trace. Internally, stories of transfers or unexpected retirements were used to cloak the disappearance of employees who had publicly voiced their concerns. There was no doubt that being a whistleblower in Big Pharma would be a dangerous endeavor…..someone with as much to lose as the CEO of InnovedMed would stop at nothing to end him.
After all an “accident†could still happen to him any time, any place.
Many individuals and compajnies had already been charged and convicted. Pfizer’s Warner Lambert unit caught red-handed promoting the epilepsy drug Neurontin for non-indicated uses. Pfizer was hit with $430 million in fines. There was TAP Pharma who, along with Abbott Labs and Takeda Pharmaceutical, conspired with high==prescribing doctors to overbill government insures for Lupron injections and offered kickbacks in the form of free drug samples….AstraZeneca pled quilty to a nationwide scheme to illegally market their cancer drug Zoladex, resulting in a $355 million dollar fine. Schering Sales Corporation and its parent company, Schering-Plough, were sentenced to pay $436 million as part of a settlement with the Justice Department over accusation it improperly market cancer drugs for unapproved uses and lied to the government about drug prices. …However getting caught was of little consequence compared to the potential gain. So Big Pharma continued to engage in illegal practices and adhere to marketing strategies that enticed otherwise good people to give in to their lust for money and power.
The RSD’s would have the DSMs put the sales force on the offensive by pointing the finger at the competition and alluding to the possibility that Pfizer and Merck were behind all the negative press regarding Zychol’s safety.
“I had some very intereactive Q&A sessions after my CME lectures with really good feedback….By the was, do you know when I’ll be getting the check for those talks?â€â€¦â€Glad you brought that up. I have the check right here,†Ryan said, handing him a large manila envelope.
“I just wanted to see if I could do a half or full day preceptorship with you in your clinic.†On the surface, preceptorships were touted as teaching opportunities for physicians and learning opportunities for the drug reps. Underneath it all, they were simply income opportunities for the doctors and marketing opportunities for the drug companies. Most pharmaceutical companies used preceptorships to access “hard-to-see†or “no=see†physicians….In return the rep would pay the doctors an honorarium anywhere from $500 for a half day to $1000 for a full day. Of course, the more important the physician, the higher the dollar amount…..â€Well, we usually can’t pay more than $1,000 for a full day, but since you are such a key opinion leader for us, I got it approved by my manager for $1500.â€
“InnovaMed will randomly select doctors every so often and send them a questionnaire attached to a copy of their signed sample receipt.â€â€¦â€And, you know our docs always complain that their signatures on paper don’t really look like their signatures on the computer?â€
Anyone in field sales could access the information at any time with just the press of a button. But the DEA number was just one piece of intelligence in an arsenal of private information used by Big Pharma to market their products.
Pete Broussard was a win at any cost manager and anything he could do to win was in play. Broussard fought dirty, and his people had to both accept and adopt his methods or they were gone. His orders flew in the face of both PhRMA guidelines as well as ordinary business ethics. A perfect example was Broussard’s signature sales tactic, which was direct his team to set up “switching†contests for nurses and pharmacies. The game was designed to convert prescriptions to InnovaMed brands before they were filled with a competing brand. His strategy was so simple it was genius- to get ancillary medical personnel to help his people push prescriptions from the inside. His underlying belief was that if his team could not convince the doctor to prescribe the right brands, he would us the “back door†approach. He was influencing the people who influence the prescriber. In Garrett’s mind, it was still “quid pro quo,†something in exchange for something, clear and simple. Nurses loved the opportunity to “earn†salon gift certificates for themselves and pizza luncheons for the office. In the frenzy of the switching contest, the nurse lost sight of what the patient really needed or could afford. Pharmacies, enjoyed the fact that someone was willing to spend a little money on them.
Brad thought his job was about building relationships, conveying product knowledge, and applying sales skills, when it was actually about grants, honorariums, and promotional spending.