Let me know your specialty and location. If interested I will give you my generic e-mail address and I can put you into contact with the correct people.

I saw my previous company blatantly promote off-label and claim that it was their right to free-speech to do so. They put it in their business plans and carried it out without warning - with drugs that have serious side-effects. The goal was money, more money and still more money. They didn’t care one bit about patients and what they might suffer. It was absolutely disgusting and personally made many of the people with integrity very sick. They got rid of any objectors and laughed all the way to the bank.

Typical Big Pharma - rotten to the core!

I’m an experienced physician who would love to hear about companies where ethics and integrity are valued. Lots of places say that’s what they want, but there just as bad as everyone else.

Thanks in advance.

MDMD

it is too bad you have worked for the wrong people.

If you want to stay in the industry, are a doctorate level practitioner let me know. I can personally vouch for 3 companies that are incredible. In each, I at the very least know the med director if not higher up and all are great people at great companies that would never ask you to compromise your ethics/values. If you are nonHC - which I suspect, I can’t help you. I think that sales/marketing people should be very well separated to prevent any influence from those without clinical backgrounds.

So let me know if you are a doc, your specialty and area of the country and I will provide you some contacts.

Up until recently I was a hard core clinical development person, who summarily rejected many of the accusations against the industry. Over the past few years, however, I worked in Medical Affairs which has exposed me to amazingly egregious compliance violations related to off-label promotional activity, off-label sampling and not so independent research. I would love to think that the reason my company is so very sleazy is because we have unethical senior leadership and it’s a small biotech, but the physicians with whom I’ve spoken have indicated that our competitors are equally sleazy with regard to pushing off-label uses.

I also have to note that, having worked across multiple therapeutic areas, CNS seems to be the area in which medical affairs & sales take the most liberties.

This may suprise you,..I agree with what you say. Fortunately,. I have the financial resources to provide the best medical care for my family, unlike the majority of others.

If you’re able to maintain your morals and ethics within a Big Pharma company, then you are truly in a unique company. I’d advise you to never leave, because you are not likely to find another company where you can do the right thing. I’ve worked at two of the Big Ones and they were both as crooked as a ram’s horn. My personal ethics were compromised almost every day. Off-label was viewed as “free speech” and “encouraged” by commercial management. Just don’t get caught! Then they’d fire the rep “to make him/her an example of how they deal with non-compliance” and go on to commit it again.

MDMD

Are there truly ethical drug companies? I doubt it! I’ve worked in Medical Affairs and the pressure to approve commercially-oriented information is incredibly intense. If you don’t, you’re labelled as an obstuctionist and a bad fit. Next thing you know, the pink slip arrives because you won’t rubber-stamp the tactics of commercial.

Unfortunately for MRDs/MSLs, they are frequently pushed and pushed by the company to be “super reps” and only say what commercial wants them to say. They’re expected to ride with reps and parrot the company message. if they don’t, then they’re labelled as ‘no good” and ineffective because they don’t drive sales in their region. In fact, many companies evaluate their performance by drug sales.

Big pharma needs to be set straight by the government. Whether it’s Congress, the FDA or the OAG doesn’t matter. They are corrupt money-hungry corporations who care little about patients, and are driven solely by their earnings and their stock price.

There’s liars, d%$&mn liars and Big Pharma liars. The latter are the absolute worst, because patient safety is at risk! See SP, MSD, GSK, AZ, Lilly, JNJ and many others recent news articles - most of them report wrongdoing in some way or the other!

CVMD

I have NO control over that. That isn’t my area. This is, I had a strong opinion on it and expressed it. What sales does is way out of my control. I am responsible for providing credible information to the request of practicing physicians. BTW - there is strong FDA oversight of everything we do, period. There are even random audits by the agency without notice. You can say what you want about the FDA, again not my responsibility.

This is just like at home, I can only control what I am directly responsible to do. My company follows the rules laid out and as a HC pro, I ethically do the right thing all the time - PERIOD.

Lisa,

I am sorry I don’t have a sol’n. I actually trust the majority of docs to do the right thing. Do their homework, find the right information and appropriately treat. You do have to remember that medicine is truly an art - there are very few black/white issues and no one comes into the office with a sign above their head telling you what is wrong with them. Are there bad docs out there? Yes, just like everywhere else in the world. Would they practice poorly even if they didn’t accept lunches, etc from pharma? My guess is Yes as well. A bad doc or ethically challenged doc isn’t going to change to a model citizen just because a guy making $200,000/year didn’t get a $5 sandwich.