Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13878

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Publication type: news

Moynihan R.
Global PR firm outed as force behind blood clot awareness campaign
Crikey 2008 Jun 27
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080627-Global-PR-firm-outed-as-force-behind-blood-clot-awareness-campaign.html

Full text:

The international PR firm Fleishman-Hillard, working with drug company
money, is helping run a high-profile campaign to raise public awareness
about blood clots in Australia.

The campaign, which appears to be run by a coalition of doctors, has
generated headlines claiming blood clots are more deadly than AIDS, and
articles suggesting drug injections for at-risk patients in hospitals could
become mandatory, quoting a doctor saying “all patients should be given the
prophylaxis.”

But a national expert on medicines, Professor Alasdair Millar has told
Crikey that suggestions like these were extreme and could “cause more harm
than good.”

It’s widely agreed many hospital patients could benefit from an expanded use
of drugs to prevent serious clots. However there is also concern the drugs,
which carry the rare but serious risk of bleeding, could be given
inappropriately.

“There is a real danger these drugs will be given to patients who simply do
not need them, and who cannot benefit from them, but are exposed to the risk
of bleeding,” Millar says.

The campaign to promote wider use of drugs appears to be run by a “Coalition
for Action”, but Crikey has discovered PR firm Fleishman-Hillard is working
closely with the coalition, with funds from the French giant Sanofi-Aventis,
which markets a drug to treat and prevent clots.

The drug company declined to comment, but Sian Davis from Fleishman-Hilllard
said the firm was helping the coalition with “logistics and the development
of materials”. The firm is part of the Omnicom network of advertising and
marketing agencies, which had revenues of $12.7 billion last year.

According to Fleishman’s website, they can help with “conditioning the
market” for a company’s drug, can ensure “product messages reach the right
people at the right time,” and can facilitate relationships with
“third-party organisations” like the coalition fighting blood clots.

Crikey revealed in April that guidelines endorsing an increase in the use of
drugs were being distributed in hospitals, without disclosing they had
received Sanofi-Aventis support.

In Sydney last month the “Coalition for Action on VTE” (venous
thromboelmolism) held a summit at a five-star hotel, to raise public
awareness about blood clots, and released a report from Access Economics.
Both the summit and report were part-funded by Sanofi-Aventis, a fact not
revealed in the Access Economics report.

Confirming the drug company was one of the sponsors, Access Economics
director, Lynne Pezzullo, told me no sponsor had any part in the report’s
direction or findings. “Pharmaceutical companies don’t make atomic weapons,”
she added, “they make medicines that continue to improve our health and
wellbeing.”

The Chair of the working party which wrote the guidelines, commissioned the
report, and initiated the summit, is John Fletcher, Professor of Surgery at
the University of Sydney, who says more appropriate use of preventive drugs
could reduce deaths, but cautioned that patients at low risk should not be
targeted with drugs.

Asked whether sponsors’ names should be stated in sponsored materials like
the guidelines and the Access Economics report, Professor Fletcher told
Crikey that he thought they should. In response to questions about whether
Fleishman-Hillard was working for Sanofi-Aventis, while at the same time
being engaged in public relations activities for the coalition of doctors,
Professor Fletcher said he did not know.