Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13455

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Another Black Eye for Big Pharma
NJBIZ 2008 Apr 7
http://www.njbiz.com/weekly_article.asp?aID=58460176.8723287.961155.8443598.9628735.941&aID2=73926

Full text:

THE FUROR over the cholesterol-fighting drugs Vytorin and Zetia could not have come at a worse time for the public’s image of Big Pharma, which has increasingly become an industry that critics love to hate. The impact of the latest blow is of course greatest on Schering-Plough and Merck, which jointly produce Vytorin, and is particularly damaging to Schering-Plough, which makes Zetia as well.

But the controversy tars the entire industry since it goes to the question of marketing practices that are already the focus of widespread criticism. Baldly stated, the issue is whether drug makers put profits above the public welfare by heavily touting products that are of questionable value or safety. Exhibit A is the huge advertising budgets that companies use to promote existing blockbusters at a time when their pipelines of new products are growing thin.

Drug makers, however, may feel they have little choice. Drug discovery is a largely hit-or-miss affair that can absorb vast sums of money without yielding breakthrough products to replace the revenue from blockbusters going off patent. For many companies, the solution is to promote their current best sellers for all they are worth.

But this is not the best way to look at things. Drug makers would do better to shift large amounts of dollars from their advertising budgets to R&D efforts to increase the odds of developing new products. This would help not only to replenish pipelines, but also to counter the growing perception that what companies are most eager to treat is the condition of their bottom lines.