Live from beautiful Jersey City …
June 19, 2009 – 10:43 amI’m writing from the HCMA conference at the Westin Hotel on the Jersey City waterfront (yesterday, I even moderated a panel), but I’m still doing a blog roundup. You, my readers, demand it of me, and I have no choice but to obey. Newswise this week, events were dominated by the healthcare reform bill debate in the Senate (Bloomberg reported that action on the bill might be delayed until July as Senate Finance Committee Democrats work to reduce the costs of the overhaul). As part of the reform, the House is considering withdrawing tax benefits for drug advertising. Also in the headlines was the medical device company Synthes, where four top executives were indicted for allowing an unapproved study of the company’s bone cement that led to the deaths of three patients; Watson Pharmaceuticals’ acquisition of the Arrow Group for $1.75 billion; and FDA announcing that the use of certain Zicam nasal products could result in the loss of the ability to smell. Marketer Matrixx Initiatives is withdrawing the products, which could cost the company up to $10 million.
Around and about …
At Bnet, Jim Edwards wonders how Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, came up with the $37 billion figure for prescription drug advertising spending. “My guess is that Rangel, D-N.Y., is referring to sales, general and administrative costs — the budgets for sales reps, marketing and free samples,” Mr. Edwards says. “SG&A is most drug companies’ biggest expense (far ahead of R&D). Add all those budgets together nationally and you’ll probably get a lot more than $37 billion. It’s in there somewhere.” Mr. Edwards says the pharma industry can use the concept of giving up the deductibility on ads as a good-faith gesture and a bargaining chip in the reform debate. Time will tell.
Other interesting items at Bnet: Johnson & Johnson was apparently the biggest spender on medical junkets for Pentagon personnel; the Myelin Repair Foundation is not immune to the economic difficulties plaguing every biotech enterprise; and Merck sales reps are infuriated by miscommunications over new Singulair warnings.
According to Thomas Sullivan at Policy and Medicine, Harvard will be revising its conflict-of-interest policy in six weeks; the Association of American Universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges have responded to the National Institutes of Health request for comments regarding a proposal to separate industry influence from federally funded clinical trials; President Obama is proposing to give more power to the Medicare Payment Advisory Committee; and the American Medical Association House of Delegates has referred the report, “Financial Relationships with Industry in Continuing Medical Education,” back to its Council for Ethical and Judicial Affairs for further revisions.
At In the Pipeline, Dr. Derek Lowe takes a look at the view from Pfizer’s corner offices; and has some perspective on the election mess in Iran from his Iranian-born wife’s relatives (see his Twitter feed and his posts here, here, and here). “And more to the usual subject of this blog: the Iranians have produced a lot of top-notch people in science, medicine, and engineering - I’ve seen and worked with many of them,” he says. “But I’d love to be able to see what they could accomplish working from a free and stable country, and I hope I get the chance. We’ll see.”
John Mack at the Pharma Marketing Blog slams Proctor & Gamble’s “dysfunctional” Asacol community for ulcerative colitis patients; and praises UCB for partnering with PatientsLikeMe to create an open community for epilepsy patients, one that would actually gather information about adverse effects for UCB’s drugs. He also thinks the DTC print ad for Trilipix is the worst he’s ever seen. “What we have here (in the Trilipix ad) is a failure to communicate anything at all!” he says. “It’s not that the risks aren’t as EASY to read as the benefits; both the risk AND the benefits are DIFFICULT to read!”
Ellen Hoenig Carlson at AdvanceMarketWoRx’s Notes from the Back of the Book has kinder things to say about the Asacol patient community than Mr. Mack does. “Hats off to Asacol for launching a community building effort on their branded site! (though the site itself could use some improvement with regard to user experience and graphics),” she says.
Rich Meyer at World of DTC Marketing likes the Facebook page for Gardasil; asks who do you trust when it comes to drug approvals and safety; and looks at the payments to physicians by medical device companies “One would think that when a physician is paid $800,000 that the company would go out of their way to verify that the information was factual and accurate but it seems that in this case Medtronic continued to issue the checks for a physician who developed products for the company, trained doctors and spoke at company events,” he says. “So the line between good medical information and being a paid cheerleader was crossed and as long as this physician spoke and promoted the product it seems that Medtronic was willing to write a check. What’s wrong with this picture and how could common sense go out the window?” He also wonders if President Obama really understands the costs of today’s healthcare.
Steve Woodruff at the Impactiviti Blog has some interesting insights about the use of social media. “We’re better off focusing on terms like community-building, connecting, and communicating,” he says. “That’s the point. SM tactics are…well, tactics.”
At Hooked: Medicine, Ethics, and Pharma, Dr. Howard Brody has up another one of his case studies on how to detect marketing bias in sponsored research. He also comments on the discussion of the tax rebate for drug advertising and talks about the American Medical Students Association’s improved scorecard on how much pharmaceutical influence is allowed by medical schools.
PharmaGossip gives us the news of Reese Witherspoon’s upcoming role as Pharm Girl.
OK, I have to run into another panel. I’ll try adding this to over the weekend.
