Pharmaguy's Insights Into Drug Industry News

[Oliver] took on the pharmaceutical industry’s marketing practices, starting with the people who talk directly to doctors, the pharmaceutical reps. He claimed that all reps are physical beauties, his source for this information being the TV comedy, Scrubs. Actually, during the segment he showed comments from five different former pharmaceutical reps all of whom are quite ordinary looking. Maybe this is why they are ex-reps. He went on to say that these reps are not necessarily trained in science but could, in fact, have been political science majors, implying that these folks have no business being in doctors’ offices talking about medicines. Here he does a disservice to thousands of people. Over my Pfizer career I met many reps who are extremely intelligent. Not all of them were science majors in college, but they undergo months of intense training when first hired to learn about the basics of the drugs that they will be promoting. I would argue that the training they receive puts them on a par with many people who comment or write about medicines for major news outlets.

Finally, if I were a physician, I would be quite offended by the parody that Oliver used at the end of his segment. He makes doctors appear to be nitwits who are easily influenced by the lure of a sales rep bearing goodies. In his view, doctors are corrupt and their prescribing practices are governed by payments and perks from pharmaceutical companies. Do people think so little of doctors that they believe this?

PhRMA has a new leader, Mr. Stephen J. Ubl who began his Washington tenure on Capitol Hill, serving as special assistant to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA).

"Mr. Ubl has the opportunity to change the tone of the current pricing debate as well as the other issues that impact the pharmaceutical industry’s reputation," says former Pfizer Exec John LaMattina.

You have to admire Mr. Ubl for his courage in taking on this role as he couldn’t have picked a more difficult time to assume the mantel of industry spokesperson. If there is one issue that all the current candidates for the U. S. Presidency seem to agree on, it is that the pharmaceutical industry needs to be reined in, particularly with respect to drug prices. There couldn’t be a bigger bullseye on the pharmaceutical industry.

Mr. Ubl has chosen to defend other questionable positions. For example, many object to new drugs that are modest modifications over older equally effective – and likely cheaper – medicines. Mr. Ubl defended this practice saying that “What some call small changes are often important clinical advantages.” A better answer would have been that all new drugs need to demonstrate meaningful benefits over existing medications to justify their pricing. If any new drug doesn’t add value, physicians, payers and patients should stay with the lower cost drugs. He also needs to avoid such as rhetoric “The debate around drug pricing is myopic and misinformed.” Rather than telling people they don’t understand, it would be better to describe the value of new medicines and provide examples as to how breakthrough medicines save the healthcare system money and save people’s lives.

With the Ebola virus ravaging Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, one would think that the World Health Organization (WHO) would be very busy doing what it can to help slow this serious outbreak. Yet, it appears that one of the WHO’s priorities is to attack Pharma as part of the problem. Last week, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan assaulted the industry for not taking an interest in developing an Ebola vaccine. Here are some of her remarks.

“Ebola has historically been confined to poor African nations. The R&D incentive (for Pharma) is virtually non-existent. A profit driven industry does not invest in markets that cannot pay.”

Certainly, as an industry, pharma is very profit driven. Actually, all biopharmaceutical companies are profit driven since without revenues and a return-on-investment, investors would look elsewhere with their funds. Furthermore, investments in drug R&D carries a high risk as evidenced by industry consolidation and the high failure rate for biotech start-up ventures. Given this situation, one might understand that a profit driven industry would, in fact, focus on diseases like cancer and heart disease, which impact on both poor and rich around the world, rather than a horrible disease like Ebola which in the last 40 years has arisen sporadically.

However, contrary to Chan’s comments, the pharma industry HAS invested in an Ebola vaccine. Last September J&J announced that, not only had it been working on an Ebola vaccine, but it was accelerating its development. In conjunction with Bavarian Nordic, a Danish biotech firm, J&J hopes to have 250,000 doses of the vaccine available for testing next May. But J&J isn’t alone in seeking Ebola vaccines.