Thread by @bzdug

It's a cold Sunday afternoon, and I wanna talk a bit about my insights into the Pharmaceutical industry.

Specifically why I believe that the the corrupting influence of the profit motive in medicine is a problem that #M4A can really start to address.

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My first peek behind the curtain was about 18 years ago. My roommate got his first job out of college as a sales rep for a drug I'll call Shmaritin.

He spent the next several weeks studying sales materials, and then one day, the delivery truck arrived.

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Every square inch of our garage was loaded up with Shmaritin swag. Calendars, mug cozies, mouse pads, tissue boxes, hats, t-shirts, and pens (so many fucking pens).

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His job was basically acting as a delivery man for merch and drug samples. He had a budget for taking doctors out to dinner and golf (that practice was made illegal a few years later).

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He told me that the sales rep is often a doc's primary point of knowledge on a drug. 😬

Now don't get me wrong, he knew his stuff when it came to the science of how the drug worked. At least, he know the science he was told to memorize.

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The goal of the job was clear, get those script numbers up. Doesn't matter if our drug is the most effective, it's our drug, so we push it.

This never sat right with me.

Now for some of my own personal experience working for Pharma

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In 2009, back when I was a Flash developer, I took a freelance gig at a pharmaceutical ad agency. I had no idea that there were agencies that ONLY handled pharma, but after seeing the idiosyncrasies of the work, it made sense.

Teams of lawyers don't pour over standard ads.

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My primary job was to build out the touchscreen sales app that reps would use while pitching a doctor on a drug.

Part of the job was animations like booger particles flying around and then disappearing when the drug took effect, or basic interface stuff.

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The most insidious part of the job was the crucial and difficult task of integrating a suite of sales tracking components.

Here's what those components did:

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Every time a rep is pitching a doc, they'd go through the sales app, showing different screens depending on the concerns of the doc.

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These components tracked everything shown to each doc, and the data for every pitch was synced to a central database.

This data was then analyzed and used to further tweak the sales materials, based on what correlated with an increase in scripts.

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Then there was the time the pharma ad formula crystalized for me, but I think most people can see it now.

Since I'm a jack of all trades, word got round that I knew my way around Final Cut at the agency.

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I was asked to do some minor edits to a hemophilia drug video that would be playing at some conference.

The whole video was stock footage of scientists, and people kayaking, bike riding, and sportsballing, with a sultry voice over.

All while not bleeding uncontrollably.

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The actual ad was 5 minutes long, then I had to do audio time compression for the disclaimer to keep it as short as possible while still being (technically) understandable.

The disclaimer was also 5 minutes long, and sounded like a micro machines ad.
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I recently caught up with my roomate. He had spent about 10 years in Pharma, and now works for a hospital. He shared some disturbing insights on that, but I can't go into them now.

We talked about #BernieSanders and I told him my thoughts on #M4A & I didn't hold back

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I said there shouldn't be sales people. No one should be profiting off of life-saving pharmaceuticals.

We should commit resources to finding the best drugs, determining all their side effects, and alternates for people they aren't suitable for.

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As far as educating doctors on advancements in drugs, that shouldn't fall on the shoulders of sales people.

The information should not be tainted with any persuasive argumentation. No marketing teams are needed.

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We could have that in the FDA, but these for-profit companies can lobby and even get allies appointed to it.

If we all have so much respect for science, then we need to recognize that self-centered profit-motives are an obviously corrupting influence.

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I'm surprised this isn't brought up more with regard to the anti-vaxx movement.

People who've worked for, paid attention to, and been hurt by our for-profit pharma industries have legitimate reasons to be skeptical of their products.

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If we were to designate the study of public health and drug development as out of bounds for capitalism and greed, that would go a long way towards restoring the public trust, especially on the increasingly fraught issue of vaccination rates.

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A department of public health should be developing these drugs.

They should be provided AT COST.

We can cut a lot of waste by eliminating the need for pharma ad agencies, and merch companies, and sales teams, and CEO salaries.

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I said all of this to him, and without hesitation he said: "You're not wrong."

We gotta get the money outta medicine.

Donate, Call, Canvas, and VOTE for #BernieSanders2020

/FIN

BTW, shout out to @wendellpotter, a real inspiration

I told my pharma sales rep friend about you and what you've done to expose the belly of this beast.

He can't do what you've done because it would blow up his whole life, but he feels the moral dilemma.