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Drugs Mean Never Having to Say You?re Sorry

By Joe Consumer

We written before that the focus on ?litigation alternatives? in the health care bill is one big distraction.  This includes talk about ?apology? proposals, where doctors and hospitals who commit malpractice ?apologize? to patients.  Fine, but they don?t always work.  

Yet that doesn?t mean we didn?t find totally fascinating the recent piece in the New York Times about drug companies, and what they think about ?apologizing? to families for manufacturing unsafe drugs that injure or kill people. 

?Apologizing,? they say, ?isn?t popular among drug makers.?  Here?s an excerpt:

Indeed, in light of a Harris poll last month that reported that Americans trust drug makers only slightly more than they trust tobacco or oil companies, contrition still could have a public relations upside for drug makers.

The poll was published at the end of a year in which a series of government investigations and lawsuits showed how some drug makers paid leading physicians and patient advocacy groups, engaged in misleading marketing, supported ghostwritten articles in medical journals and tried to squelch doctors? concerns about drug safety.

We?ve written a lot about this too (here, here), so check out how Pfizer is trying repair its sorry reputation for all this. Today, Stanford University "will announce plans to develop new continuing education programs for doctors that will be devoid of the drug industry influence that has often permeated such courses. The work is being done with a $3 million grant ? from the drug maker Pfizer.?  No matter this company's history, like  that it just ?paid $2.3 billion last year to settle government fraud charges of deceptive marketing, including sponsoring supposedly independent programs promoting off-label uses for the pain drug Bextra.?

No strings attached, they say. But we loved this comment: ?'The announcement is self-satirizing,' said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a Georgetown University medical professor who has researched and written about industry influence in continuing medical education. 'Pfizer?s interest in better ways to manipulate physicians is well-known.'?

Meanwhile, the GAO is also now reporting that prices for some its smallest-selling but most vital medicines ?have risen more than twofold in recent years as drug makers seek to squeeze greater profits? out of these drugs.  ?The price for a drug intended to treat a rare form of cancer went from $390 for a full course of treatment to more than $3,000, investigators found.?

I think the pharmaceutical industry is way beyond apologies at this point.

Full post as published by ThePopTort on January 11, 2010 (boomark / email).