Meet The New Head Of J&J’s Troubled McNeil Unit
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // April 8th, 2011 // 7:20 am
Some assignments are more challenging than others. And Denice Torres will certainly have a big mountain to climb now that she is running Johnson & Johnson’s beleaguered McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit, the division responsible for numerous manufacturing gaffes that led to an eye-popping series of product recalls and a spate of troubles for the once-venerable healthcare giant.
Since 2009, Torres headed CNS (or central nervous system) for North America Pharmaceuticals for J&J’s Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit. For two years prior to that post, she was an Ethicon sales and marketing vp, and an Ortho McNeil Neurologics marketing vp. She reports to Pat Mutchler, who was recently named company group chair for US over-the-counter and nutritional products (see this).
Before joining J&J, Torres worked for 15 years at Eli Lilly, where she held different senior management jobs, such as heading worldwide CNS marketing, US women’s health, US growth disorders, and US pharmaceutical business analytics and new product planning.
No, there is nothing in her background to suggest she has extensive experience in either over-the-counter products or manufacturing. The intersection of these areas is where J&J ran into trouble over the past 18 months, ever since the McNeil engaged in a botched attempt to paper over its problems with a surreptitious recall.
Meanwhile, a wide array of once well-regarded over-the-counter meds have disappeared from stores, including Tylenol, Benadryl and Motrin, along with recalls of hip replacement devices, contact lenses and syringes. The episodes have eroded trust among consumers and investors; hurt sales; reduced employee bonuses; prompted government probes and lawsuits, and congressional hearings. Oh yes, there was also a consent decree (read here).
Meanwhile, the embattled Peter Luther, who had been McNeil president, is taking on a new role - president of US Consumer Healthcare. In other words, even if Torres can not solve the problems, she should not be too worried - things may go wrong, but another job awaits. And maybe - just like J&J ceo Bill Weldon - she will still qualify for a raise, no matter what transpires.
Salmon
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/12/selling_zyprexa.php
“In 1998, Lilly went back to the FDA seeking approval to market Zyprexa to those battling Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, the company said in its 2003 request for a meeting on a proposed label change. Lilly withdrew its bid to promote Zyprexa for Alzheimer’s cases in 1999, according to the document.
In a November 2000 memo to Lilly salespeople, company executives said the dementia marketing initiative was abandoned because the FDA questioned Zyprexa’s effectiveness in treating the ailment.
“It was withdrawn due to vagueness on the FDA’s part regarding a definition of efficacy,” Lilly officials said in the document.
In a 2003 memo to FDA regulators citing the clinical studies, Lilly researchers acknowledged the death rates among older dementia patients on Zyprexa in the reviews were two times higher than their counterparts taking placebos.
Deaths among the patients taking Zyprexa in the studies were “significantly greater than placebo-treated patients (3.5 percent v. 1.5 percent, respectively),” Lilly officials said, according to the unsealed documents.
The studies didn’t find Zyprexa was effective in treating dementia, the company acknowledged in this document.
Lilly recognized this earlier, according to a 2002 document entitled “Zyprexa in serious mental illness (65 plus years) — A Strategy Review.”
“The treatment of serious mental illness for people over the age of 65 has been identified as a growing opportunity for Zyprexa,” the authors wrote. “Unfortunately, attempts to gain the data to support an application for an indication in the treatment of dementia have to date been unsuccessful.”
But on the other hand, we have:
Lilly’s long-term care unit also saw Zyprexa sales rise 2.9 percent in the second quarter of 2002 as sales of Risperdal, Johnson & Johnson’s rival antipsychotic, fell, according to the 2002 marketing plan.
At that time, long-term care sales made up about 20 percent of Zyprexa prescriptions, according to the summary. Of that number, 65 percent were written for nursing-home patients.
Overall, prescriptions for older patients were the “2nd biggest money-producing segment” for Zyprexa in the U.S., according to a Feb. 15, 2002, e-mail from Lilly researcher Peter Feldman to Denice Torres, the company’s global marketing director.
In that e-mail, Feldman said company officials were saying in internal memos that they were going to stop studying Zyprexa’s potential health benefits for elderly consumers.
That would risk “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs to save on poultry feed costs,” Feldman said in the unsealed messages.
Torres assured him older consumers would continue to be a prime target for Zyprexa sales, according to the e-mail.
“Elderly remains an important aspect of target PT and affiliate focus,” she said in the message.
Increased Zyprexa sales to elderly patients also won Lilly’s long-term care unit praise in a 2003 newsletter unsealed as part of the documents.
“For two consecutive years, you have been on top and have turned in above-plan performance,” Grady Grant, Lilly’s national sales director, wrote in the newsletter. “I look forward to working with you as we set our sights on overtaking Risperdal as the number one antipsychotic in the marketplace!”
industry insider
I’ve been around this business for 30 years and it is the only industry I can think of where incompetence is rewarded with inexperience and nepotism. You mean to tell me that there isn’t someone in this entire industry with both manufacturing experience and is an outsider that can’t step into this job?
I tell you who did it the right way. When Ford Motor Company was struggling a few years ago they brought in Alan Mulally as CEO to turn their fortunes around. Relevant experience?
1) MS in aeronautical engineering from KU.
2) MS in management from MIT
3) EVP of Boeing
4) CEO of Boeing Commercialo Airplanes
Track record at Ford? Return to profitability in record time without one penny of government bailout money.
M. Black
LOUUUD NOISES!!!!!!!
MB
industry insider
“Meet the New Boss. Same as the old boss.”
Peter Townsend.
http://www.answers.com/topic/won-t-get-fooled-again