Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20033

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: Magazine

Sims G
They whistle while you work
Focus 2005 Aug 1212

Full text:

Pharmaceutical companies and their travelling representatives haven’t exactly been getting a dream run in the zeitgeist recently. And if the latest news of several forthcoming films and books are any indication, they are now presenting as the widest of targets.

The film Side Effects, which debuted on the independent film festival circuit in the US in March (it’s expected to have a general art house release later this year), is touted as fiction, but considering that the US writer-director Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau worked for 10 years as a drug rep with Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson, and admits that many of the episodes presented in her film are derived from notes she took of experiences she had during her time working there, the parallels have plenty of weight.

Her lead character has a crisis of conscience about the methods she uses to push her product, an antidepressant called Vivexx. As Slattery-Moschkau told the BMJ (which previewed the film in its 16 April edition), when sales reps go into doctor’s offices they were “armed and dangerous” with information on each doctor. Reps know the prescribing habits of every single doctor they visit. The so-called ‘science’ background of these reps, supposedly equipping them to inform doctors on the benefits and pitfalls of certain drugs, can include anything from political science to geology. “Most of the people I worked with majored in history or drama or music”, she told the BMJ.

In the film, Vivexx of course has some damaging side-effects that the character plays down until the new love in her life encourages her to be true to her ethics. Ironically, as she begins to amend her spiel to include the other half of the story, she finds her new-found honesty with doctors only increases her success within the company.

This aspect of the story certainly appears authentic: the writer herself admits that at the time she left her job three years ago to write and produce the film she was earning a generous six-figure salary, with a company car and expense account on top of that. The film itself was shot over 18 days on a total budget of a mere $180,000.

She’s not the only drug rep whistleblower to emerge. A new book, Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, released in April, also has the big P companies offside. It’s written by Jamie Reidy, who sold for Pfizer over a five-year period from 1995. As the publisher cites of this work of non-fiction: “Jamie Reidy is to the pharmaceutical business what Jerry Maguire was to professional sports and Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can) was to bank fraud…
With equal parts self-confidence and self-mockery, Reidy tells it like it is in the drug-selling trenches that are our local doctor’s offices”.

If that wasn’t enough, enter stage waaaaaay left the spectre of one Michael Moore. After his award-winning efforts setting fire to the Bush administration in Fahrenheit 9/11, after previous documentaries directing his at corporate America in Rodger & Me and the arms industry in Bowling For Columbine, the word on the internal emails of US pharma giants is that Moore is directing his attentions to their domain. A recent report in the LA Times suggested that at least six of the nation’s largest companies have already issued internal notices to their work forces, preparing them for potential ambushes.

“We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary – and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you’ll know who it is”, said Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development.

Believed to be called Sicko, Moore’s film is rumoured to have a release in the first half of 2006.
The pharma industry seems to know where it will be coming from. “Moore’s past work has been marked by negativity, so we can only assume it won’t be a fair and balanced portrayal”, said Rachel Bloom, executive director of corporate communications for AstraZeneca.

“His movies resemble docudramas more than documentaries”.

Said Court Rosen, spokesman with the drug industry’s Washington lobby group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: “What our society really needs is a serious debate about overall health care based on facts, not just another one-sided micro-mockumentary”.

Suspicion appears to have reached the level of paranoia: companies have apparently warned their sales representatives to be on the lookout after reports that Moore representatives were offering $50,000 to doctor;s offices to place hidden camera or $5000 to sales representative who were willing to be filmed.

Moore is quiet on the subject, declining to confirm or deny his intentions. For once. Which can’t be good news in the pharma world.