Driving In Traffic

Thanks to Michael Russell for the heads up about an article published from an interview I did a couple of months ago with Kayt Sukel on the influence of blogs and social media in healthcare.  She also interviewed Nick Jacobs and Mike as folks who get how blogs can be a valuable tool.
Mike purchased the reprint rights and you can read the entire article HERE.

In a previous post I wrote about the pros and cons of pharmaceutical companies partnering with big philanthropy to help cure/treat diseases.

Now, Fard Johnmar at Envision Solutions has posted on how the public is becoming skeptical of alliances between pharmaceutical companies and nonprofits that are aimed to educate and improve health. As his post indicates, Fard’s company commissioned a big study (available for purchase) of this very issue and has found that

“43% of US adults believe that pharmaceutical companies fund groups like the American Heart Association and the National Kidney Foundation in order to get more people to buy their products or medicines. “

I haven’t purchased the report, but this one fact alone is evidence of the consumer cynicism that is a result of the numerous scandals associated with the pharmaceutical industry and a few greedy practitioners. Call me an eternal optimist, but it continues to amaze me what a few bad apples can do.

Here’s where the rant begins…

Fard’s research is intelligent and insightful. In my view, the research is very helpful in that it simply takes the temperature of what is going on — here and now— in the thoughts of the consumer/patient. Honestly, I think studies like this give us quantitative insights to what we all know… the healthcare industry is changing and consumers/patients are playing a larger role in how, when , where, and what care is delivered. Honestly, I have no beef with the report or with Fard– but it just got me started thinking about the one sided nature of this discussion.

What I do have a beef with is the extremists that continually bash the pharma industry without any thought about bashing those industries (hint–mainstream media and unethical education companies who took research reports and published them unedited as gospel) and prescribers who failed to think for themselves.

Afterall, it takes two to tango. –Right? And since the dawn of time every scientific study has had limitations that need to be examined before applying the findings to real life. I think it is dangerous to focus on the the actions of the largest kid in the room and forget to share the blame with other individuals for not being analytical, skeptical or simply failing to fulfill their responsiblity/duty to think for themselves. (I hear the echos of my mother’s voice… “You wouldn’t jump off a cliff it Sally told you to, would you?”) Afterall– temptation and influence are not torture techniques that make us do things that are against our better judgment.

I suppose what set me off was the ridiculous and sensationalized segment, last night by Brian Williams from NBC Nightly News on physician perks– which interestingly has a huge ad for an antidepressant on the page. (Hmmmmmm….) I suppose that is a rant for another day.

Nonetheless, I’m telling you– for a vast number of clinicians, a dinner, a pen, samples, or a sticky pad does not make a prescriber write a prescription. It just not that simple…

• Nor does the drug rep’s technique of rearranging sample cabinets so that his/her product is eye level and center make a prescriber write a prescription.
• For that matter, nor does the hate mail from insurance companies and PBMS (medco)– that innundates prescribers asking for them to consider other more forumulary friendly medicines.
• and just one more…Prior authorization processes are also a big failure too.

For most clinicians, they prescribe a treatment that they think will work given a complex set of individual patient parameters. Medicine cabinets can be arranged just as easily as paperwork can be refiled… that is why they have a staff.

What alarms me most is underlying unspoken belief that pharmaceutical companies have eliminated or brainwashed all analytical and skeptical thinkers in medicine.

• Yes, of course there are idiots who will believe anything.
• Yes, in the past, pharma has had a lot of influence.
• Yes, we are seeing a timely and healthy correction of this.

But — lets not get carried away and vilify the entire industry to exclude any good they do.

To me, this new statistic from Fard’s study simply means our age of innocence is officially a thing of the past. We all are simply going to have to use our brains a little more– which honestly, we should have been doing anyway.

Thanks for letting me indulge in a rant. I promise– I’ll try to be a little less emotional in my next discussions of this.

“Envy slays itself with its own arrows.” Greek Proverb

Hello… my name is Carol and I have a terminal case of Nikon Digital Camera Envy (photo by Kodoma). My preoccupation with Nikon started when I was my high school’s photographer and was able to use the schools beautiful 50mm camera. Over the years it has gotten worse. Now…This condition has ruined my online life (none of my photos are on my blog and I do not have a flickr account) because I have two other (Minolta and Sony) digital cameras that I hate using because of the knowledge that I do not have the camera of my dreams.

For about a year I have had a serious case of camera envy directly pointed at Josh Hallett and his Nikon D80. This case of camera envy is quite severe– in fact, it might go right on in to Camera Covet. In hopes releasing the demons, I have personally confessed my envy to Josh several times. But honestly, that hasn’t worked. In fact, I’m almost convinced that Josh enjoys these little confessionals– as he usually finds some new cool thing to show/tell me about his camera. It’s like giving a drink to an alcoholic…

It is so bad that recently at a blogger meet up in Atlanta after Podcamp when the non-blogging hubby met Josh for the first time, he shook his hand and said “Nice to meet you. However, you’d be wise to keep both hands on your camera and if it ever comes up missing– give me a call, its likely at my house hidden in my wife’s closet.

In fact, my serious case of Nikon Envy may have reached terminal stage when Mike Schinkel showed up at the Atlanta Social Media Club Meeting with his new Nikon D40 and showed me all of the photos he’d been playing with. showed up at this month’s

Now… I’ve learned from Josh that Nikon has a blogger program and they are giving cameras to bloggers/photographers who use their own photos or who have large flickr libraries. Doh!!!!!!!!
So here I am— no flickr account, no photos online, and nothing but sadness in my heart. The only thing I can offer is a prayer asking for forgiveness for having such a lapse in character.

Let this be a warning to you… envy does indeed slay itself with its own arrows. I am living proof! Get treatment early– with the first signs and avoid my fate.

I suppose my only chance at redemption is to convert the change jar (photo by El Ramon)from “video camera” to “Nikon Dreams”

I just read a Reuters article by Ben Herschler on the potential influence of the Gates Foundation on the pharma industry. A quick quotation to get you started:

“The billions of dollars thrown at global health problems by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are changing the game in drug discovery, posing big challenges to the world’s top drugmakers, according to a report on Tuesday.

Pharmaceutical information group IMS Health Inc. said the emergence of megabuck philanthropy was both a threat and a collaboration opportunity for manufacturers.

“Pharma companies need to develop an explicit strategy to deal with this phenomenon,” IMS said in its annual Intelligence.360 report on factors shaping the industry.”

Now my day job is in healthcare and I’ve done a lot of work with the pharma industry over my career. I have helped with clinical research, written patient education materials and consulted on launch strategies and professional education efforts on new treatments.

Yes– major philanthropic associations can do a lot to bolster the research efforts of pharma. Additionally, pharma gets good karma points for partnering with good causes. Nonetheless, one must always remember that in economics and business, nothing is ever free. Afterall, today’s new era of empowered philanthropy, generous giving rarely means “without strings.”

Just looking forward: How will pharma handle the philanthropist’s demands for affordable prices on these new treatments that they have helped to bring to market? Afterall, right now most new treatments are priced based mostly on what the market will bear and competitor prices, rather than any real analytical plan to recoup costs plus a reasonable profit.

Or will philanthropic organizations require a “return on investment” when partnering. If so, what would this look like?

Not to leave out the megabuck philanthropies, I also have questions for them. What happens when an ethical question comes up about the research on a treatment? How will you ensure that your altruistic and philanthropic missions are not compromised by a greedy and immoral few? All it takes is one poorly designed study, one failure to disclose financial relationships, or one questionable and tragic death to occur in one of those studies to ruin all the good work being done.

We need only look back as far as 1933 and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to see how unethical research can ruin the trust of individuals who need care. Growing up and working in the south, I have seen the unfortunate legacy of this experiment. I have personally heard many African Americans voice suspicions and be doubtful of treatment offered to them. Some people going so far as to avoid doctors and hospitals at all costs and dying because they refused to seek treatment. I can only imagine what would happen if something similar happened in AIDS/HIV ravaged areas. It could completely undo all the work being done and send us tumbling toward the loss of multiple generations of people who really deserve better.