The Ethically Challenged: How Pharma Fares
8 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 2nd, 2008 // 3:49 pm
In these ethically challenging times, which drugmaker has its act together? Covalence, a research group based in Geneva that tracks ethical reputations, has released its 2007 list examining various industrial sectors. The firm compiles its rankings and charts by collecting reports - both positive and negative news - from the Internet and an ‘open network of correspondents’ among various civil-society groups, researchers, consultants and the like. The data is then coded, quantified and synthetized into curves and volumes.
The rankings are, of course, relative. They merely compare drugmakers to one another and don’t examine ethics in absolute terms. In other words, company A is perceived as more ethical than company B, but that’s not the same thing as saying one or both companies are, or aren’t, particularly adept at adopting and exercising ethical practices. The 2007 Best Ethical Progress report, which calculated positive minus negative news between January and December 2007, also reflects an international view. This may explain, for instance, why Johnson & Johnson shows up near the top, despite taking a beating last year for filing a trademark lawsuit against the Red Cross.
1 -GlaxoSmithKline
2 - Abbott Labs
3 - Johnson & Johnson
4 - Sanofi-Aventis
5 - Boehringer Ingelheim
6 - Schering-Plough
7 - Takeda
8 - AstraZeneca
9 - Bristol-Myers Squibb
10 - Amgen
However, this list doesn’t tell the whole story. When all sectors are considered, Glaxo and Bristol-Myers fell out of the overall top 10, where they landed a year earlier. And if you scroll further down the entire corporate list, you’ll find that several big names - Lilly, Wyeth, Novartis, Pfizer and Merck - all landed in negative territory for the year.
Dan
Gotta comment on this one. Comparing the ethical preceptions of such corporations is similiar to comparing the ethics of those perhaps on death row or who do great harm to others, such as children. Thier objectives of these organizations, relatively speaking, are all the same, which is to maximize profit. Ethics, by definition, is about conducting itself by doing the right thing and living the right way. It’s not as simple as an analysis of who or what is right or wrong, which is typically interpreted by those who were studied- the definitions of those terms.
George Merck once said, and this is not a direct quote, that the medicine is for the patients, and the profits should follow. In my experience, this premise is not visible, or has become less visible over time, if detected at all, for that matter.
Justice in Michigan
It’s probably in there somewhere, but I could not find who voted in these rankings - coaches, fans, AP?
One more reason why we need a real national playoff.
(But seriously - if FDA NDA reviewers, ODS folks, and ORA staff, voted in a way that genuinely insured confidentiality we might actually have a reasonably good ranking.
Matt
A reputation can be purchased with any good PR firm. Reputation counts for nothing in this world.
I just have to laugh at the fact that someone put the subjects of Big Pharma and ethics in the same sentence.
henry
Dear Ed,
As you are a member of the media, is it possible for you to get a response from the presidential candidates, as to their thinking on pharmaceutical companies, the FDA and oversight of patient safety, since they are all for change!!
Thanks in advance.
Mike L
There exists a way to do this kind of analysis. This is not it. What do you learn by tracking positive versus negative news stories? Some stories are reported more with greater frequency and ferocity than others. Some stories are more sensational. Trying to think up appropriate controls for this type of analysis is, in my opinion, as close to impossible as you can get.
What you would need to do here is talk to the experts. Talk to the customers, the partners, the employees, and the competitors. While doing an AP search may be easy, this study is almost completely worthless when it comes to what a company is REALLY doing. The only real value I see is in discovering the trends as to what people deem newsworthy.
For some ideas on how to proceed, look to Geoffrey Miller’s answer to what he changed his mind about this year. You can find it at:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_15.html
J
I thought Abbott was heavily criticized for refusing to market new medicines in Thailand earlier this year due to an intellectual property dispute. While you can argue the merits of their case, I’m still surprised to see them so high on the ethics list in spite of that controversy.
Hank
There is a poll that Gallup/WSJ has done periodically since at least ‘97 that seems to show fairly credible patterns about public perceptions of pharma - both practices and products - as well as other industries. Price Waterhouse also did an interesting poll a couple of years ago comparing the attitudes of pharma top execs, stakeholders, and general public. Ed has probably reported on these.
Unless there is a methodology here I don’t understand, it’s always more about perceptions than actuality. I’m not sure how actuality could ever be measured except by numbers of indictments, etc., and even that would be only suggestive and entail very small numbers.
Truthman
Hilarious ..
GSK topping an ethical survey…Ha ha.. This is a joke right?
That’s like Saddam Hussein being awarded the nobel peace prize…
Mr Fiddaman (of Seroxat Sufferers) did an excellent post on this article some time ago… and he came up with some very revealing information on the
“questionable” authenticity of this poll…
http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2008/01/first-2008-seroxat-sufferers-dumbass.html
GlaxoSmithKline ethical?
Ethical:- Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession. See Synonyms at moral.
This is some kind of joke right?
Hang on a minute… I smell a rather large rat
Wanna smell it with me folks?
Well lookey here
http://www.covalence.ch/index.php/clients/
Scroll down the page and you will see that the compilers of the ‘ethical’ list have many clients - one of whom are non other than GlaxoSmithKline!
Covalence - I hereby award you with the prestigious Seroxat Sufferers Dumbass Award
COVALENCE…YOU ARE DUMBASSES!