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Are the big pharmaceutical giants in for a fall within the next few years? It seems that the U.S. public and the media have a love-hate relationship with the drug companies. Those drugs are "needed" to treat various ailments and conditions, but the drug companies (and their sales forces) take marketing a step further and try to have customers use their drugs in ways the FDA did not approve.U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris had had enough of all this. She recently resided in yet another case of a pharmaceutical company marketing its drugs for uses that had not been FDA-approved. When Judge Saris told the drug company (Schering Sales Corp. of Schering-Plough Corp. (NYSE: SGP) fame) that "You can't thumb your nose at the FDA," she meant it and slapped it with a $435 million fine to settle allegations it lied to the government about drug prices and illegally promoted the drugs Temodar and Intron A for the treatment of cancers for which they were not approved.
Are drug companies shenanigans like this going to hurt the chances for other drug companies? A U.S. Senate bill that just passed this week and gives more powers to the FDA, allowing it much more scrutiny of pharmaceutical drugs, may open the drug companies up to more exposure. Something that's desperately needed by consumers and investors alike.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-11-2007 @ 11:29AM
Barbara Gettman said...
Closer scrutiny and oversight of drug marketing practices and pricing is long overdue. I work in healthcare and as more and more time passes I am increasingly convinced the worst event in healthcare was permmission for drug manufacturers to market prescription drugs to the general public on TV, radio, and print.
5-11-2007 @ 8:19PM
David said...
I currently work in a pharmaceutical sales position and our marketing practices are no worse than any other industry. We provide a product that must be sold. What is wrong with this? Should all sales in every industry be banned? Why is the pharmaceutical industry different? As a pharmaceutical representative, our hands are tied in many cases and we are allowed to far less than sales people in just about any other type of sales. The industry still has a bad reputation from when drug reps were allowed to spend a lot of money on entertaining physicians. Drug reps have not been allowed to do this sort of entertaining now for almost 5 years, yet the pharmaceutical industry still has this reputation. We have been unfairly targeted, and the public is grossly misinformed about what drug reps are actually allowed to do. The pharmaceutical industry is no different than any other business and sales reps are in most cases just honest people trying to earn a living for their families. The public would like to see all of these hard-working professionals lose their jobs because they think they shouldn't have to pay for pills that provide good health. As nice as this seems, it costs a lot of money to develop new medications and unfortunately the public must pay for this product as much as they would like to "steal" the pharmaceutical industries products and services.