Drug marketing spoof reminds us of real issues

I read your comments in the Editor’s Corner in the April 25th issue of Fierce Healthcare. I disagree with the underlying premise of your comments. In response to your bullet points:
• Drug companies do not advertise a “get the drug at all costs and under any circumstances” message. Even if marketers had this ethic, there are too many internal legal, regulatory and medical hurdles to make this happen.
• Drug companies should play a role in advising patients. They should make easy to understand materials for patients receiving medications to ensure their safe and effective use. This advice is in addition to (not in place of) the advice patients get from their physician.
• Once and for all, drug companies do not try to hide side effects from their patients. It makes no business sense to hurt the very people who are going to use your product. In addition, recent lawsuits (phen/fen, Vioxx, etc.) make hiding information suicidal. It’s true that certain adverse events show up after a drug reaches the market, but it is not always apparent that the drug is actually causing the event. Professionals in pharmacovigilance within the companies investigate all reports of new or unusual events to determine causality. These events are also reported to the FDA and followed up on. The information is then communicated to physicians and patients. It’s important to understand adverse events and weigh them against the benefit the drug is providing in order to properly evaluate the ongoing use of a drug.
Finally, are you suggesting that Capitol Hill intrude even further into the pharmaceutical business as a way to fix these perceived problems? That, I find humor in.

"...are you suggesting that Capitol Hill intrude even further into the pharmaceutical business as a way to fix these perceived problems?"

Intrude even further? Capitol Hill intrudes on pharma companies in more or less the same way that
the publishers of TV Guide intrude on the television networks. Oh, sure, occasionally one program or another gets the short end of the Cheers/Jeers stick, but it's a fundamentally symbiotic relationship.

Now, I can't speak for the editor, but I certainly believe that further (any) intrusion is called for. In fact, I won't be happy until the government crawls so far up the pharma companies' asses it can floss their teeth. I'd much rather have government over-regulating Big Pharma (or any other industry) than Big Pharma "regulating" itself.

Frankly, at the moment, it seems that neither is happening see /www.fiercepharma.com/story/pharma-drags-feet-on-promised-studies/2008-04-24 in yesterday's FiercePharma)

Of course, any politician who even toys with genuinely regulating the industry is unlikely to get that all-important Big Pharma money come next election year. So don't worry, "Anonymous," your pharma company salary / bonus / fee-for-propagating-their-b.s. isn't in jeopardy.