Essays: Is marketing the enemy of pharmaceutical innovation?

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 13-17

  Applbaum, Kalman ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CELECOXIB; ROFECOXIB; VALDECOXIB; NEW DRUG;

DRUG COST; DRUG INDUSTRY; DRUG MARKETING; DRUG RESEARCH; HEALTH SERVICE; MEDICAL PRACTICE; MEDICAL RESEARCH; PHARMACEUTICAL CARE; SHORT SURVEY; ARTICLE; CLINICAL TRIAL; ETHICS; EXPERIMENTAL THERAPY; HUMAN; MARKETING; RESEARCH; UNITED STATES;

CLINICAL TRIALS AS TOPIC; DRUG INDUSTRY; DRUGS, INVESTIGATIONAL; HUMANS; MARKETING; RESEARCH; THERAPIES, INVESTIGATIONAL; UNITED STATES;

EID: 70349560883     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: 1552146X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hcr.0.0157     Document Type: Short Survey

References (24)

1. F. Simon and P. Kotler, Building Global Biobrands (New York: Free Press, 2003), 147.
2. As I was revising this essay, the following appeared in my hometown newspaper: "The conclusions were clear: Women who took hormone therapy drugs were at increased risk for breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots. The findings were so strong that researchers stopped a clinical trial in 2002, five years early, because it would have been unethical to continue giving the drugs to women. But that same year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Medicine and Public Health began a medical education program for doctors that promoted hormone therapy, touted its benefits and downplayed its risks. For the next six years, thousands of doctors from around the country took the online course that was funded entirely by a $12 million grant from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which makes the hormone therapy drugs used in the study, Prempro and Premarin. "J. Fauber and S. Rust", Are Doctors' Loyalties Divided? UW Course for Doctors Pushed Risky Therapy", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 25, 2009.
3. See D. Healy, "The Engineers of Human Souls and Academia", Epidemiologia e Psichiatria Sociale 16, no. 3(2007):205-11;
4. S. Sismondo, "Ghost Management: How Much of the Medical Literature Is Shaped Behind the Scenes by the Pharmaceutical Industry?" "PLoS Medicine 4, no. 9 (2007) : e286;
5. S. Sismondo, ed., "Special Issue on Intersections of Pharmaceutical Research and Marketing", Social Studies of Science 34, no. 2 (2004);
6. A. Petryna, "Ethical Variability: Drug Development and Globalizing Clinical Trials", American Ethnologist 32, no. 2(2005):183-97;
7. R. Moynihan and D. Henry, "The Fight against Disease Mongering: Generating Knowledge for Action", PLoS Medicine 3, no. 4 (2006) : e191;
8. K. Applbaum, "Pharmaceutical Marketing and the Invention of the Medical Consumer", PLoS Medicine 3, no. 4 (2006);
9. K. Applbaum, "Getting to Yes: Corporate Power and the Creation of a Psychopharmaceutical Blockbuster", Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 33, no. 2(2009):185-215.
10. Government Accountability Office, "New Drug Development: Science, Business, Regulatory, and Intellectual Property Issues Cited as Hampering Drug Development Efforts, "" 2006, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0749.pdf.
11. M. Goozner, "GAO: Drug Innovation Lags Despite High Drug Prices", Gooznews on Health, December 19, 2006; http://209.85.229.132/ search?q=cache:akdAKwFemfUJ:www.gooznews.com/archives/2006-12.html, accessed June 18, 2009. Another study revises the estimate of nonbreakthrough applications to 92 percent;
12. P. Shetty, "More Creative Thinking Needed On Drug R&D", YaleGlobal Online, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5678.
13. L3 Healthcare Marketing, LLC, home page, http://www.l3hm.com/index.php, accessed June 29, 2008.
14. G. Critser, Generation Rx (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 91.
15. L3 Healthcare Marketing, "Pharmaceutical Marketing and Planning: Securing Future Success through Meaningful Differentiation", http://www.l3hm.com/documents/L3-Pre-CommercialWhitepaper0508.pdf, p. 1, accessed June 30, 2008.
16. W. Koberstein, "When Worlds Collide: The Unleashed Power of Marketing/R&D Collaboration", Pharmaceutical Executive, September 1, 2002, http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/Current+Issue/When-Worlds- Collide/ArticleLong/Article/detail/29963.
17. Trovan later became infamous for the ethical research abuses associated with its testing practices in Nigeria.
18. Thought leaders are also known as "key opinion leaders" or KOLs. An excellent description of how KOLs are recruited and the purposes they serve can be found in A. Matheson, "Corporate Science and the Husbandry of Scientific and Medical Knowledge by the Pharmaceutical Industry", BioSocieties 3(2008):355-82.
19. Simon and Kotler, Building Global Biobrands, 147.
20. J. M. Donohue, M. Cavasco, and M. B. Rosenthal, "A Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs", New England Journal of Medicine 357(2007):673-81.
21. Simon and Kotler, Building Global Biobrands, 147.
22. Arguments have been offered in favor of the utility of "me too" drugs, the most robust of which is that drugs in the same therapeutic class might offer differential efficacy and side-effect profiles for different patients. This is true and offers some qualification to the criticism of these drugs. Factually, however, the number of "me too" drugs among a narrow range of profitable therapeutic classes is disproportionate, and the distinguishing profiles among these tend to be narrower than advertised. My argument here is that drug companies do not pursue the production of "me too" drugs with the aim of offering medically meaningful differences, but rather to win easy market share in markets where development of these drugs contributes to their absolute growth.
23. M. Goozner, The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 8.
24. R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1920), 24.