A pharmaceutical industry insider writes:

I have something to add to Monika Ever’s article in yesterday’s Crikey on the techniques used by Glaxo to promote their anti-smoking products. GlaxoSmithKline manufactures and promotes Zyban (bupropion) to GPs and specialists in Australia. This drug was originally manufactured to be an antidepressant, however it is now marketed as an aid to help people stop smoking. This is what Glaxo would be urging patients to get from their GPs rather than the patches and gum (as it is a prescription product). Xenical, Viagra, Cialis, Aricept, Fosamax and many others have had similar ad campaigns throughout the years, all of which do not mention brand names and hence are within the Australian guidelines. Perhaps the more interesting point of the Zyban story is that it is reimbursed by the PBS under certain conditions, even though by all reports it has widely varying success rates.

However, I believe that the biggest threat to damaging a medico’s reputation is not that of the advertising of pharmaceutical companies, but rather the misinformation streaming from the media. A case in point would be the story Today Tonight did on Lipitor supposedly causing memory loss. The next day, surgeries were flooded with calls from scared patients who may have forgotten where they put their keys the day before (never mind that the story was about transient global amnesia – or acute total memory loss). Pharmacists also felt the crush.

I believe that this was a cynical attempt by Today Tonight (and any other current affairs program that has hyped up stories on antidepressants or HRT etc) to capture an audience by promoting a story that involves one of the most commonly prescribed medications and coupling it with an illness that people are terrified of – in this case memory loss. The sensationalism around health stories disadvantages everyone, except for advertisers and television stations.

An anonymous subscriber writes:
The anti-drug company vignette from Monica Evers would have been a lot more powerful – and valid – if it did not contain some horribly mistaken comments uttered as fact. “Glaxo Wellcome” does not exist. Glaxo Wellcome and Smithkline Beecham merged over three years ago to form GlaxoSmithkline (or GSK). That means that GSK have had smoking cessation products in their portfolio, inherited from the Smithkline portfolio, for at least that length of time. Monica’s comment has a serious proposition to make, but is lazily written and factually wrong. If she had indeed bothered to do a proper internet search, all the info she needed is available at the GSK website. To paraphrase Monica, it doesn’t take an Einstein.

In all seriousness, the pharmaceutical industry dichotomy remains “love the drug, hate the drug company.” Many pharmaceutical products bring great benefit to the community – as I am certain Monica would attest as she downed a paracetamol for a hangover after her dinner party (rather than the alternative cucumber and mint poultice). The fact is, though, that the image of corporations developing drugs and running a profit is a difficult one for the public to accommodate. I spent three years in the early nineties as a medical representative, and experienced similar arguments to Monica’s. For example one suburban female GP berated me because my company was basically making loads of money out of healthy women (in this case, oral contraceptive pills). On the other hand, she refused to accept my argument that anti-hypertensives, a therapy area that is dominated by males, was by far and away (and still is) the biggest money spinner for drug makers.