Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13984

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

Mundy A.
Note to Pharma: ‘Your House Is On Fire, and You’re Still Smoking in Bed’
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog 2008 Jul 15
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/07/15/note-to-pharma-your-house-is-on-fire-and-youre-still-smoking-in-bed/

Full text:

When members of the pharmaceutical industry came under fire from Congress this year, Billy Tauzin, the president of PhRMA, didn’t mince words.

“Your house is on fire, and you’re still smoking in bed,” he warned drug makers in a conference call.

After announcing a new voluntary code of conduct for drug makers last week, Tauzin told the Health Blog in an interview that the industry is paying now for past mistakes. “It’s an accumulation of things some companies did over the years, now it’s death by a thousand cuts.” He told drugmakers, “We gotta stop the bleeding.”

The new code, he admitted, wasn’t conceived in a vacuum. “We heard a lot from Congress that we had to do something, and this is a major step,” he said.

One of the issues that provoked political ire is companies’ aggressive direct-to-consumer commercials, known as DTC advertising, such as Pfizer’s massive ad campaign for Lipitor using Robert Jarvik.

“Our members were advertising life-saving medicines like it’s Pepsi, and that hurt us,” he explained. “We can’t sell drugs like they’re a commodity.” (That sounds a lot like what Novartis CEO Dan Vasella recently told us about the subject.)

Tauzin has been telling members that it’s time to get ahead of the story – fast.

He should know. The former Louisiana Republican congressman, nicknamed The Cagey Cajun, was always able to count votes and figure out his weak spots when he led the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

When he retired from the House to take over PhRMA (The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) in 2004, Democrats were still in the minority.

But after the 2006 elections and the Democratic win, word went forth that “The Dingell” – Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, a perennial thorn in the industry’s side – was back as chairman, and ready to rev up his old investigations committee, and that he had drugmakers in his sights.

In the past year, Dingell or his subcommittee leaders have chaired at least a dozen hearings involving drug companies and medical device makers.

A hearing in the House in May on DTC advertising was so painful for companies (and observers) that a few weeks later, Pfizer, Merck, Schering-Plough and Johnson & Johnson, all suddenly announced a six-month moratorium on ads for new drugs, and volunteered to limit how they would use doctors in their ads.

PhRMA had been working to produce a more comprehensive DTC code, but Tauzin isn’t bothered that a few of his largest members preempted the lobby’s announcement of new advertising standards. “They are competitors, and if they see a way to get out in front on something, that’s what they do,” he said. On the subject of new guidelines prohibiting pens, mugs and restaurant dinners for doctors, Tauzin said, “As long as they adopt this code, I’m happy, and they’ll be happier.”

Now Tauzin’s just waiting for next bump. “Luckily, there’s not a lot of time left this session” in Congress, he said. “I hope.”