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Drug
Companies and marketing
Our most intractable
health problems have two significant characteristics. First, they
occur to a relative minority of our population (even though that
minority may number millions of people). Second, they result in
significant part from arrangements that are providing substantial
benefits or advantages to a majority or to a powerful minority of
citizens. Beauchamp (1979: 443)
The "Free Market system" as defined by economists and
politicians has the power to assist us all by using Adam Smith’s
"Invisible Hand" to guide the best goods and services
to the most appropriate individual. Although there are obviously
some isolated problems, who could question the validity and efficiency
of globalised private industry which has promoted milk powder and
machine guns so successfully across a wide variety of setting, markets
and contexts? Surely this system, which works so eminently for (some)
national and transnational economies should work equally as well
for health care systems and certainly for the distribution of essential
medicines?
Marketing is a key feature of the current economic system and therefore
marketing is an essential component of securing new markets for
pharmaceutical corporations, one journalist remarked, " selling
anti-diabetic drugs is a big business that is going to get bigger"
(Burton 2001:1258 ). The motives (more profits) are there and certainly
the methods, utilised in a wide variety of publicity campaigns for
different products. However where does the marketing line become
a financial incentive and inducement, beginning to interfere with
clinical decision making.
The "excessive hospitality" of Merck, Sharp and Dohme
by organising a "dry ski slope and go-cart contests…shrimp
fishing and dinner dances"(Sheldon 2001:382) are in fact legitimate
marketing exercises on a grander scale than show bags and free pens.
Like wise the accusations that some speakers were on the Merck,
Sharp and Dohme payroll is another established feature of business
relations. As Burton (2001: 1258), describes in his article in British
Medical Journal,
A guide
on "medical education" published earlier this year by
the British trade magazine Pharmaceutical Marketing leaves drug
promoters in no doubt what they should aims for. "the best
marketing, and the cheapest, is editorial" the guide said.
Readers believed claims made in editorial sections far more than
claims made in an advert, "the most expensive way into a publication"
the guide added
Furthermore
another author, (Jackson 2000:1312) describe similar tactics again
published in Pharmaceutical Marketing magazine such as developing
"opinion leaders" who are able to influence others, "building
successful relationships" and "working with a mix of people
who can ultimately be called upon to communicate upon your behalf"
Does this sound familiar? This could be the marketing tactics of
any cola drink utilising celebrities or rock stars.
Moreover, the tactics of "controlling the message" and
utilising "key opinion leaders" seems remarkably similar
to those utilised by our present Government in it’s feeding
of restricted images to media outlets and relying on key public
servants and navy officials to present "the facts" about
a "certain maritime incident". How can we have higher
expectations of transnational corporations, which are paragons of
virtue, compared to that of our own representative Government?
References:
Beuchamp, D. E., 1979 "Public Health as Social Justice",
In E.G. Jaco (ed), Patients, Physicians and Illness, third edition,
New York: The Free Press. 443-57.
Burton, R. (2001), "Selling drugs- with a little help from
a journalist" BMJ 323, 1258.
Jackson, T. (2001), "Are you being duped?" BMJ, 322,1312.
Sheldon, T. (2001). "Drug company fined for excessive hospitality"
BMJ, 322, 382.
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