Healthy Skepticism Library item: 89

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

Barnett A .
Revealed: how stars were hijacked to boost health company's profits
The Observer 2004 Jan 25
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jan/25/society.research

Full text:

Famous women have backed an NHS screening test unaware they were being set up by a biotech corporation and its PR agency.

Few could question the sentiment behind the campaign: a fight against cervical cancer. A clutch of famous women, including Liz Hurley, Caprice and Carol Vorderman, signed up to support a crusade to introduce a new NHS screening test that could save the lives of thousands of women. The campaign is due to reach the House of Commons on Wednesday, when MPs will be lobbied on the issue.

But an Observer investigation has uncovered how the celebrities have been duped into supporting a sophisticated lobbying campaign secretly orchestrated from Brussels by one of the world’s largest public relations firms, Burson-Marsteller. Celebrities contacted by The Observer said they had no knowledge of the lobby group.

Our investigation reveals increasingly covert methods that healthcare and pharmaceutical firms are using to push products in this multi-billion-pound market. From hiring ghost writers to get favourable articles published in medical journals to setting up allegedly independent campaign groups, the aim of this strategy is to obscure the drugs firms’ involvement and the fortunes they stand to make if their wares reach the public.

The company, whose headquarters are in New York, has conducted a clandestine lobbying campaign on behalf of Digene, the US biotech firm that would make hundreds of millions of pounds if the tests were introduced in the UK and elsewhere. The idea was to set up a ‘grass roots’ group of celebrities and other high-profile women that would appear to be an independent body and pressure Ministers to introduce the new screening tests.

Last December a group calling itself the European Women for HPV Testing sent letters to influential women asking for support. HPV, the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus, has been linked to cervical cancer.

The letter stated: ‘Each year 12,800 European women die needlessly from cervical cancer, a slow-growing that is 100 per cent detectable and 100 per cent treatable if detected early enough.’

It wanted recipients to lend their support to a national screening test for HPV, described as the ‘cause of this disease’.

Just as in other health campaigns, the group had its own logo – a flower – and a website listing all the high-profile members who had signed up to the campaign.

One recipient became suspicious of the letter – and passed it to The Observer – after noticing that the address of European Women for HPV Testing was a PO box in Brussels. The address was traced to a post office near the European Parliament. Counter staff had no knowledge of the campaign group and refused to reveal the identity of whoever set up the PO box, claiming it was secret. The letter was signed by Sara Johnsson, who was tracked down and found to be a full-time lobbyist in the Brussels office of Burson-Marsteller, close to the post office.

In the firm’s European headquarters, chief executive Jeremy Galbraith admitted Burson-Marsteller had set the group up as a front for its lobbying campaign in 2001. He also confirmed it was funded by Digene – a long-standing client of the company. But Galbraith insisted it was done to raise awareness of the links between HPV and cervical cancer.

Galbraith said: ‘We needed to differentiate cervical cancer from other types of cancers. Breast cancer campaigns get most of the attention… all they need to do is get a woman with breast cancer running a marathon in a bra, and they get their picture in the paper.’ Digene’s share price will rocket if its tests are accepted by governments on the Continent. It has put out a press release quoting support for its product from the European Women for HPV Testing, without revealing that it funds the group.

However, all of the celebrity backers contacted by The Observer , including Liz Hurley and Caprice, had never heard of the group – let alone admitting to being members, as its website claims. A spokesman for one of the women, Carol Smillie, said he would seek legal advice.

In public relations jargon, this covert lobbying exercise is known as the ‘third party technique’. It is becoming increasingly common in the multi-billion-pound health industry. If the client is a large multinational, then journalists, celebrities and politicians will be much warier about taking calls and listening to arguments for a particular drug or health product. To get around this, the public relations firm gets its client to fund a ‘grass roots’ organisation, which it gives a neutral name that will not arouse suspicions. Burson-Marsteller has used this technique in other fields. For example, in 1995 it set up the Foundation for Clean Air Progress, which was a front for an industry campaign to pressure the US Environmental Protection Agency not to adopt tougher air pollution controls.

Dr Angela Raffle, a consultant on public health who runs an NHS cervical cancer screening programme in Bristol, said it was the latest in what she described as ‘celebrity selling’ of healthcare products.

She said: ‘It is outrageous and potentially dangerous. We have seen it in prostate cancer, osteoporosis and in the marketing of other expensive drugs.

‘It is a way the drug companies can bypass the authorities and medical profession and take their lobbying straight to the public.’

While Raffle saw some merits in the HPV test, she said it was far too early to make any decisions and the results of a number of scientific studies had to be considered.

The HPV test does have its strong supporters, including Professor Jack Cusick, an epidemiologist working with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He believes, for example, that older women who are found not to have the virus are at no risk of getting cervical cancer and would not be required to have a three-yearly cervical smear.

He said: ‘My research shows it could have a valuable role to play in cancer screening and there has been a lot of foot-dragging by the Government.’

Cusick did, however, volunteer the fact that his research had been funded by Digene. There is no suggestion that this influenced Cusick’s research, which was published in the Lancet , but the fact he receives money from Digene highlights the problem for officials and Ministers who have to decide on whether to give the green light to an expensive new drug or health product.

A spokeswoman for Digene denied there was any intention of misleading either the public or the celebrities. She said the idea of the women’s group emerged spontaneously after meetings with women who were interested in promoting awareness of the causes of cervical cancer.

She said: ‘It is simply not true. This is not a cloak-and-dagger operation.

We make sure everything is very transparent and we clearly state that Digene funds the campaign group.

‘All the celebrities were contacted in October asking if they wished to continue to support the campaign. I am very surprised if they didn’t know about the group.’