In the Pharma World, Begging for Forgiveness is Much More Profitable

September 5th, 2009. By Hunter West

Just when, did the medical community begin serving the pharmaceutical industry—instead of the other way around? 

The recent fine levied against Pfizer for various marketing sins involving a handful of prescription drugs may well be the largest ($2.3 billion), and most comprehensive (Pfizer was required to sign an agreement of conduct that has been described as being the most stringent in history)—but it is by no means the first such case. Pharmaceutical companies have for years been bending the rules and circumventing regulations by promoting drugs off label (that’s illegal), and other unsavory activities, all in the quest for the mighty greenback. 

Doctors have been lavished with gifts in exchange for prescribing someone’s drug. They accept ‘consulting fees’ from pharmaceuticals in exchange for lecturing, in their own words mind you, on the benefits of a particular drug. It’s all perfectly legal, but it shouldn’t be. 

And that’s one of the many wrongs percolating in a health care system that’s severely broken and in need of overhaul. 

There was a time when doctors had to rely on their gut instincts, together with various tried-and-true home remedies to keep us all healthy. Over the years, research has resulted in groundbreaking products that have helped and supported the medical community in doing just that, making heroes out of the likes of Jonas Salk. 

But then, along the way, something changed. Power and greed infested Big Pharma, which suddenly realized that it had the power to develop drugs that had the capacity to treat just about every condition known to man. Not just drugs capable of making us well when we’re sick. Suddenly there are drugs to treat erectile dysfunction (for most, a natural process of aging), or the increased need to get up in the night to pee (again, a natural function of aging). 

Gwen Olsen, outspoken author of ‘Confessions of an (Prescription) Drug Pusher,’ and herself a former pharmaceutical rep, rails against a pharma drug culture that creates need for drugs where need does not exist. A corporate culture that would like nothing more than to see every individual on some kind of medication just to live—let alone the need that arises when individuals become ill. 

It’s a culture that creates an even greater need when the much-maligned and allowable side effects (because the benefits outweigh the risks, y’know…) often require a secondary drug to treat the symptoms of a side effect stemming from the first. 

And so it goes.

A $2.3 billion dollar fine would sink most companies. But Pfizer—their merger with Wyeth notwithstanding—is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world and bound to become larger as more drugs are developed to treat not only diseases, but also various processes of aging that—while not reversible—are treatable. The need is the question mark. 

The Pfizer fine and accompanying requirements is hopefully a sign that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is about to become tougher as part of a hoped-for overhaul of the US healthcare system under the Obama Administration. But that’s a tall order, not the least of which is how the FDA is funded. In railing against Levaquin, the fluoroquinolone antibiotic that allegedly caused him to become disabled, former pharmaceutical rep-turned-activist John Fratti says that half the FDA’s financing stems from a fund paid into by the pharmaceuticals. 

Critics, including many in government, have long taken the FDA to task for inaction, or delayed reaction, when a drug appears to pose a real threat. The debacle and tragedy over Trasylol is but one example. For the FDA to be an effective policing agent of pharmaceutical companies, it cannot accept one dime of funding from the pharmaceutical sector. Its management cannot have any ties at all to Big Pharma. Only then can the FDA avoid any appearance, or reality of conflicted interest—and only then will Americans be in a position to trust a regulator that will have, truly, the taxpayer’s best interest at heart. 

Until then, the status quo is akin to a bad horror movie where an evildoer with all the power and without a master to serve, connives to take over the world. The pharmaceutical industry began by serving the medical community. Somewhere, along the way, that paradigm reversed. 

And now, as Pfizer demonstrated until it was finally called out for misbehavior, Big Pharma appears to subscribe to the juvenile credo of begging for forgiveness rather than asking for permission. 

The former is much more profitable. Which means that until the health care system is reformed from the top down—including how the FDA is funded and empowered—Big Pharma will continue to push the envelope in the presence of a permissive parent who only puts her foot down at the most grievous indiscretions. 

And here we all thought a ruler of the free world would emerge, if any, from the computer and communications field. In reality, whomever takes over the world in a real-life horror movie will govern with an Rx pad… 

Tags: Big Pharma, Pfizer

This was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Drugs/Medical . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.