Wednesday, July 07, 2004
from the ever more sucking boston globe:
"As the life sciences industry grows in Massachusetts, it needs to do a better job of explaining to the public what it does. Part of the reason that many people (and many elected officials) believe prescription drugs
should cost about as much as Skittles is that they don't understand the regulatory constraints the industry works within, the obsessive focus on quality, and the innumerable failures that companies must endure to get a new drug to market."
ah yes, the mystical mythical allexplaining alljustifying "pipeline".
"Anyone can go on a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery in Jamaica Plain. Why can't you get a tour of Genzyme's factory on Storrow Drive in Allston? If the industry wants to be better understood, it needs to open its doors to the public.
Novartis is taking one nice baby step in this direction: It recently held a competition among school kids and adults for ideas about how it should decorate the old rainbow-striped Necco water tower on its new research headquarters in Cambridge."
jesus fucking christ, and this is a GOOD thing??????? the Novartis logo display is pasted on the main window of the MIT museum facing mass ave: it looks more like propaganda a la "kim il sung invented the hamburger and everything else worth having and all our schoolchildren have been made to sing his praises in crayon" than anything else i've ever seen in this country.
"Another free idea, in that vein: What if a biotech or pharma company plastered a sign on the outside of its building, listing the number of tests it has performed on new drug prospects this week, or the number of
patients currently using its products?"
and that poster would have a nice symmetric zero on it for a good proportion of the biotech startups in the area.
such openness might also expose the extent to which the drug industry has betrayed its supposed goals of developing new drugs, and opting instead to meet short-term wall street / irresponsible investor driven profit motives (which have nothing to do with any of the altruism so conveniently used to prop up pharma's image) in favor of marketing or reformulating old ones. or maybe that, for the larger successful companies, the number of patients using its product is incredibly high because of marketing, and large numbers of people are taking drugs that maybe aren't necessary, maybe aren't right, probably don't work better than placebo (and oh, what an expensive placebo it is) and crooked doctors taking pharma bribes? it probably doens't want to post the number of pipeline drugs because those numbers are dwindling, and are often focused on making the most money (making expensive drugs to serve small numbers of patients who can afford the treatment, rather than working on badly needed remedies for the hordes who cannot) instead of being the most effective effort to improve and save lives.
"This is an industry that relentlessly looks for opportunities to improve and save lives. Too often, that's forgotten."
HAH!
see rebuttal in new york review of books
this boston globe guy sure fell for the marketing hook line and sinker.
::hatred:: that or he's a plant. ::more hatred::
of course, some of us are planning to work in pharm ... :P
and others of us are contributing to their profits...
::hatred + shame:: ::jumping up and down:: ::killing small animals::
....
yours truly
"As the life sciences industry grows in Massachusetts, it needs to do a better job of explaining to the public what it does. Part of the reason that many people (and many elected officials) believe prescription drugs
should cost about as much as Skittles is that they don't understand the regulatory constraints the industry works within, the obsessive focus on quality, and the innumerable failures that companies must endure to get a new drug to market."
ah yes, the mystical mythical allexplaining alljustifying "pipeline".
"Anyone can go on a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery in Jamaica Plain. Why can't you get a tour of Genzyme's factory on Storrow Drive in Allston? If the industry wants to be better understood, it needs to open its doors to the public.
Novartis is taking one nice baby step in this direction: It recently held a competition among school kids and adults for ideas about how it should decorate the old rainbow-striped Necco water tower on its new research headquarters in Cambridge."
jesus fucking christ, and this is a GOOD thing??????? the Novartis logo display is pasted on the main window of the MIT museum facing mass ave: it looks more like propaganda a la "kim il sung invented the hamburger and everything else worth having and all our schoolchildren have been made to sing his praises in crayon" than anything else i've ever seen in this country.
"Another free idea, in that vein: What if a biotech or pharma company plastered a sign on the outside of its building, listing the number of tests it has performed on new drug prospects this week, or the number of
patients currently using its products?"
and that poster would have a nice symmetric zero on it for a good proportion of the biotech startups in the area.
such openness might also expose the extent to which the drug industry has betrayed its supposed goals of developing new drugs, and opting instead to meet short-term wall street / irresponsible investor driven profit motives (which have nothing to do with any of the altruism so conveniently used to prop up pharma's image) in favor of marketing or reformulating old ones. or maybe that, for the larger successful companies, the number of patients using its product is incredibly high because of marketing, and large numbers of people are taking drugs that maybe aren't necessary, maybe aren't right, probably don't work better than placebo (and oh, what an expensive placebo it is) and crooked doctors taking pharma bribes? it probably doens't want to post the number of pipeline drugs because those numbers are dwindling, and are often focused on making the most money (making expensive drugs to serve small numbers of patients who can afford the treatment, rather than working on badly needed remedies for the hordes who cannot) instead of being the most effective effort to improve and save lives.
"This is an industry that relentlessly looks for opportunities to improve and save lives. Too often, that's forgotten."
HAH!
see rebuttal in new york review of books
this boston globe guy sure fell for the marketing hook line and sinker.
::hatred:: that or he's a plant. ::more hatred::
of course, some of us are planning to work in pharm ... :P
and others of us are contributing to their profits...
::hatred + shame:: ::jumping up and down:: ::killing small animals::
....
yours truly
