Black eyes for Big Pharma – sort of
A rare, bona-fide smack-down
Of course, you know I love passing along word of lifesaving alternative therapies or warning my readers about the dangers of mainstream treatments – but do you know what really makes my day?
Being able to report to you that Big Pharma has gotten a bit of a comeuppance.
That’s exactly the case with a pair of stories today. In the first of these, a UK-based branch of the beleaguered Merck pharmaceutical brand (they made the ill-fated Vioxx painkiller) has been suspended from its own lobbying body, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
Why? Because an investigation conducted by Britain’s Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority found the company – called Merck, Sharpe, and Dohme, Ltd. (MSD) – in violation of drug sales and promotion ethics rules in several key ways:
- Subtly linking the instruction materials for a program designed to help nurses audit medication use with the promotion of an MSD blood pressure drug called Cozaar
- Offering doctors blood pressure screening services for their patients – but only those physicians who regularly prescribe Cozaar
These breaches violate the ABPI’s code of conduct, hence the three-month suspension.
Hmmm. Interesting, isn’t it, that the drug business’s lobbying arm in Britain helps to police its own industry? They clearly see the benefits of a clean and respectable image in the eyes of doctors and the public. They clearly understand that there’s more to the promotion and selling of drugs than merely making a profit. Think that would happen here in the U.S.?
Fat chance. Our answer to the ABPI is an ultra-powerful lobbying organization called PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research And Manufacturers of America). To my knowledge, they’ve never distanced themselves from anything Big Pharma does – no matter how sketchy, unethical, or deadly. In fact, I know in my heart of hearts that PhRMA does everything it can to quash or discredit unflattering information about the drug business here in the U.S
Case in point: Even this story from the UK barely got a whisper here in the mainstream media. I had to grab it off the blogs and opinion sites to even find out the skinny. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
