Beleaguered, Bamboozled, and Drugged Unto Death


A couple days ago, the Business Section of the New York Times carried an article entitled, "Big Drug Makers See Sales Decline With Their Image." It's unusual to find hilarity in business news, but halfway through reading the article, I had to untangle my tongue from my cheek, pick myself up off the floor where I was rolling around, holding my stomach, and guffawing so loudly it scared my cats. Poor misunderstood drug industry kingpins are so misunderstood! Between the Vioxx fiasco, the FDA's image problems, the constant barrage of drug advertising on TV that always seems to list diarrhea as a side effect, the press coverage of all the anti-depressants which cause suicidal thoughts, and the recent poll showing only 9 percent of Americans believed drug companies were generally honest compared to 34 percent that trusted banks, these drug characters are afraid public scrutiny will make them appear untrustworthy. Can you imagine??

The average American consumer has been mistrusting and irritated by drug companies for years...for very good reasons. In spite of the fact that ill customers need their products, consumers are angered by the high prices and the long wait in doctor's offices while drug company sales people breeze in to make their pitch. They resent the propaganda about high research costs making the drugs expensive while never seeing any cures but only an easing of symptoms, and they particularly despise the fact that other countries can buy the same drugs from American companies at much lower costs. Americans might be ill, but they still know their relationship to these pharmaceutical giants is a parasitic one, similar to a Great White Shark munching its way through a school of fish while tiny ramoras cling to its back.

The legal drug industry is a highly lucrative one. After all, our own government has helped them immensely in maximizing profits, particularly among the elderly, their largest market. Recently, however, the largest of them in terms of revenue (Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson) are seeing stagnant sales and falling profits leading to layoffs and cuts in research budgets. Even Eli Lilly, whose U.S. sales rose this year, is cutting about 4 percent of its workforce - 1,600 people. All in all, this willingness to trim staff contradicts the pseudo image of pharmas being 'caring' and compassionate about people. Bad for the image.

Layoffs are never a laughing matter but a decline in sales is directed related to a decline in customers. One of the reasons given in the article was "without new drugs to promote as patients expire..." The word expire sort of reconfirms the impersonal, million miles away image, doesn't it? Saying patients die is simply too negative, so in drug speak they expire like the warranty on a chain saw or a coupon for a pizza. No patient is recognized as a person. They are their illness, one in a variety of target markets - the cancer market, the diabetes market, the cardiac market, the acid reflux market. And never forget, the objective is not to 'cure' the illness that creates these lucrative markets. The objective is to temporarily relieve symptoms creating a long term return user, fully dependent on their product.

Not only is the customer imprisoned by illness, but the customer is also a captive prisoner of the drug maker. It's parasitic, not symbiotic. To stay in the money, pharmas also 'reformulate existing drugs,' so they can be taken once a week instead of daily. Removing the jingoism makes this phrase clearer, just as reformulating let's them do a couple things. Most important, it let's them prolong their patent on the formula, which means increased profit for them and higher cost for you, because while the patent is in effect, no other company can duplicate that formula to make a lower cost generic drug. Reformulating also allows them to raise the price on what is presented as 'better.' In reality, it's only slight of hand (in your pocket) and legal theft (from your pocket). Funny how bunco artists never have a positive image.

Drug advertising also has to be mentioned as a negative against drug company image. Because the public, thanks to the Super Bowl, is well aware of how much it costs to run a 30 or 60 second ads on TV, they are very aware of how drug prices increase to pay for these overblown and over priced sales pitches that promote wonder pills without even mentioning the illness they are supposedly designed to help. And, considering how often the side effects mentioned in the ads include diarrhea, it's no wonder the public suspects they're being fed a steady diet of 'bull' everytime an ad runs.

The pharmaceutical companies also consider the FDA as a contributor to their profit problem. It used to be the the FDA was slow to approve new medications until stringent testing was done. That bugged the drug companies. When a more business 'friendly' government administration came on scene, FDA rules were eased, helping to put drugs on the market that were eventually proven unsafe. The drug companies blamed the FDA - again. Now, testing restrictions and lengthy time intervals are being blamed by drug companies for not continuing research into promising drugs like Pargluva for diabetes, as an example. Amazing how whatever the problem in putting a drug on the market and keeping it there, it is always someone else's fault. Is it any wonder there's a image problem?

The most massive blow to the wonderful image the drug companies don't have, was the new drug plan within Medicare - a plan that punishes and confuses the elderly, offers them little to no savings, and yet insures that the drug makers and their friendly and helpful buddies in the insurance industry will keep making obscene profits. Ironically, no thought has been give to those in their customer base that will 'expire' due to anger, confusion and elevated blood pressure or heart attacks, or those who will 'expire' within the huge coverage gap after the first $2,000 in drug costs. How nice for them to legally aid and abet the killing of elderly customers while knowing that as people age, they will simply gain new customers. For them, it's like a first class assembly line on steroids into the great unknown of ongoing profits with minimal losses.

Finally, let me suggest another reason for the non-existent enthusiasm for stem cell research. Granted, the research would not lead to cures to terrible diseases tomorrow, but it is highly likely that those cures would come. Such breakthroughs would be reasons for massive celebration for normal people, but they would eliminate some highly profitable business for the drug companies. If stem cell research and more genetic identification brought cures for diabetes, leukemia, Lupis, HIV, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and a host of other debilitating and deadly illness, there would be no call for little miracle pills to keep the symptoms under control. It would certainly be bad for their image if it were discovered that the drug companies were secretly lobbying against such research, wouldn't it? Not only would they lose their main excuse for high prices - research costs - but they would lose their primary reason for being. They would become the lepers of our age, and wouldn't THAT be a death blow to their image.