Don't like what a thought leader has to say..try intimidation

Nov/19/2007 11:44 Filed in: HCP Marketing
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The report this morning that GSL intimidated a thought leader could not have come at a worse time for the drug industry. While GSK was trying to mount a defense of Avandia it obviously thought that one of their thought leaders had inaccurate information and tried to silence him through what he and the government say was "intimidation". If GSK really wants to make this right than the people responsible should immediately be terminated with a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" mentality.



It is well known that pharma will do anything to lose sales from a blockbuster. That includes forming alliances with generic manufacturers to hold off producing the product as well as trying to come out with a "new and improved" version of the product i.e. Lilly's Cymbalta which is trying to replace their lost blockbuster Prozac. But what we have here is a pharma company so willing to defend the sales of one of its drugs that it went way out of bounds and more importantly was NOT thinking of the patients health but of their own pocketbooks and stock price. This my friends is what is wrong with pharma today.


Again I do not believe that the founders of these companies would agree that the reason to market products is to get rich. They believed that if the produced and marketed good products that the profits would come as a consequence. Pharma CEO's are more about protecting stock prices than ensuring that products meet patients needs. Transparency is nonexistent and patients, now more than ever, are confused by the conflicts in data that seem to be everywhere. Pharma has not done a damn thing to resolve these issues and tries to hide in the fine print of fair balance. Take the latest Actos ads that tout it as a replacement for Avandia. A full page ad in the Times today but the fair balance was only 3/4 of a page in small print that would have taken a college PhD to decipher.


GSK has lowered the bar for the industry and frankly there is NO excuse for what they have done. If they really want to show the community that they are sorry they can start by firing the two people who were involved in the intimidation.
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