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McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

nytimes.com

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Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#121

Post by DoreenMichele »

gringoDan wrote: post #5
cwkoss wrote: post #4

The marketing of medicine in inherently unethical because it seeks to override doctors and consumers information-based evaluations, and instead make a choice based on emotional propaganda. The harm caused by any given medical advertisement is directly proportional to its effectiveness. Every pharmaceutical sales rep is an immoral cancer on our society.

To play Devil's Advocate - without pharmaceutical companies developing and marketing drugs, how do we set up an incentive structure that encourages R&D and innovation?

It would be nice if we tried to shift our focus away from drugs. We generally over emphasize the importance of drugs and surgeries to so-called healthcare and downplay or outright pooh-pooh more basic things, like hygiene, exercise and good nutrition.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#122

Post by dmurray »

umvi wrote: post #83
cwkoss wrote: post #4

The marketing of medicine in inherently unethical because it seeks to override doctors and consumers information-based evaluations, and instead make a choice based on emotional propaganda. The harm caused by any given medical advertisement is directly proportional to its effectiveness. Every pharmaceutical sales rep is an immoral cancer on our society.

I think society would benefit immensely from banning the advertising of drugs. This includes both medicinal and recreational drugs. Make all drugs legal, but mandate they have boring text/information-only labels, put the more dangerous ones behind the counter in smaller quantities, and let the only thing influencing their purchase be doctor recommendations/prescriptions or personal research. It should apply evenly fr…

Word of mouth or "personal research" is a really ineffective way to discover what drugs are suitable for you. It might be better than TV advertising, but that's a pretty low bar to set. You can understand the desire for a compromise solution like "TV advertising, but you can't lie about it too much and you have to mention side effects". And that is more or less the US status quo.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#123

Post by harshreality »

dmurray wrote: post #122
umvi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think society would benefit immensely from banning the advertising of drugs. This includes both medicinal and recreational drugs. Make all drugs legal, but mandate they have boring text/information-only labels, put the more dangerous ones behind the counter in smaller quantities, and let the only thing influencing their purchase be doctor recommendations/prescriptions or personal research. It should apply evenly fr…

Word of mouth or "personal research" is a really ineffective way to discover what drugs are suitable for you. It might be better than TV advertising, but that's a pretty low bar to set. You can understand the desire for a compromise solution like "TV advertising, but you can't lie about it too much and you have to mention side effects". And that is more or less the US status quo.

Nobody needs to discover what drugs are suitable for them. This is medicine, not a restaurant menu.

If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments.

The status quo "compromise" solution gets this exactly backwards. "This drug will make your life better. So ask your doctor so they'll comb through your medical records and history looking for something kind of like what we claim to treat[1], so they can prescribe our drug for you." Lies and failure to mention side effects are not the only problem with advertising. The problem with advertising is that it seeks to persuade people, using every trick in the book short of actionable lies and omissions, to buy drugs that even doctors can't properly evaluate because drug research is pathologically flawed. And those advertising tricks are effective at getting people to buy drugs which they don't need and which will do harm, because most drugs do some kind of measurable harm whether it's potential liver or kidney damage or increased risk of dementia or cardiovascular problems or cancer or whatever.

Pharma companies that seek to extract rent from your "conditions" are the last entities you want telling you what you might have, and they're the least trustworthy entities to be allowed to get you thinking that their drug might be your best option for treating your "condition" because you heard about theirs first and they made sure their advertisement stuck a bunch of positive associations to it in your mind.

"Ask your doctor about our drug instead of asking for advice on whether other things, including exercise, eating better, and getting better sleep might help, because those take time and effort and you have no time and no willpower except when you're dancing in a field of flowers like we showed you doing when our drugs solve all your problems so you should pay us rent for life for your 'medical condition'."

[1] Have you noticed most drug advertisements don't even claim to treat anything specific, or are intentionally vague? The charitable explanation is that the condition is often something taboo or embarrassing, but I think a bigger part of the reason is that pharma doesn't want you losing interest in the drug before you ask your doctor about it.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#124

Post by cco »

sverige wrote: post #120
happytoexplain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every pharmaceutical sales rep is an immoral cancer on our society. This seems like one of the most cleanly horizontally divided opinions in all of the US - where nearly everybody agrees loudly and strongly with it except the wealthy and powerful. I wish a presidential candidate would have the balls to echo this severe but obviously popular thought and fix the fucking system with extreme prejudice.

[flagged]

I think this is needlessly inflammatory. I agree with Trump on this and I’m sure many here do as well. No one has yet said, “orange man bad” so we shouldn’t conjure up that bug bear until it happens, it detracts from good faith conversation.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#125

Post by Scoundreller »

refurb wrote: post #110
Scoundreller wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A drug that good tends to sell itself. There will be those that don’t change their practice ever once they graduate (seen a few). Things get more complex when you have dozens of treatments for a condition with no clear winner.

I appreciate how you said “tends to sell itself”. Before I got in the industry I thought “what the hell does marketing do?”. Then once I saw what they do, I realized, no, most drugs don’t sell themselves, there is too much inertia for doing the same old thing.

The key word was good drugs tend to sell themselves.

If you develop yet another blood pressure drug or cholesterol drug and want GPs to prescribe it, you're going to have an uphill battle.

A blockbuster drug for HepC (where treatments before weren't particularly effective and had ugly side effects) will have a much easier time becoming well known amongst the specialists that treat the disease.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#126

Post by JumpCrisscross »

harshreality wrote: post #123
dmurray wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word of mouth or "personal research" is a really ineffective way to discover what drugs are suitable for you. It might be better than TV advertising, but that's a pretty low bar to set. You can understand the desire for a compromise solution like "TV advertising, but you can't lie about it too much and you have to mention side effects". And that is more or less the US status quo.

Nobody needs to discover what drugs are suitable for them. This is medicine, not a restaurant menu. If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments. The status quo "compromise" solution gets this exactly backwards. "This drug will make your life better. So ask your doctor so they'll comb through your medical records and history looking for somethi…

> If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments

I know at least a few people who didn't realize they had an ailment until seeing the symptoms listed on an ad. There is a balance between promoting new drugs (and the affiliated afflictions) to the general public and pushing medicines to doctors.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#127

Post by ttldr »

there are a lot of comments on this thread about the moral hazard of pharmaceutical advertising. i think the arguments against such advertising largely hold water, but i’m curious; what are the arguments for it?

can anyone substantiate an argument for why consumer advertising for prescription medications is good for patient outcomes?

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#128

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #126
harshreality wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody needs to discover what drugs are suitable for them. This is medicine, not a restaurant menu. If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments. The status quo "compromise" solution gets this exactly backwards. "This drug will make your life better. So ask your doctor so they'll comb through your medical records and history looking for somethi…

> If you're diagnosed with a medical condition or have a specific ailment, then you can investigate potential treatments I know at least a few people who didn't realize they had an ailment until seeing the symptoms listed on an ad. There is a balance between promoting new drugs (and the affiliated afflictions) to the general public and pushing medicines to doctors.

[deleted]

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#129

Post by pmart123 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #125
refurb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate how you said “tends to sell itself”. Before I got in the industry I thought “what the hell does marketing do?”. Then once I saw what they do, I realized, no, most drugs don’t sell themselves, there is too much inertia for doing the same old thing.

The key word was good drugs tend to sell themselves. If you develop yet another blood pressure drug or cholesterol drug and want GPs to prescribe it, you're going to have an uphill battle. A blockbuster drug for HepC (where treatments before weren't particularly effective and had ugly side effects) will have a much easier time becoming well known amongst the specialists that treat the disease.

Do you think there could be a substantial time lag in that case though? Sure, some movies become hits with no marketing, but DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Ana Margo Robbie have been everywhere to market a movie with stellar reviews and a top director. Maybe that is a poor analogy. I’m not in the pharma industry, but to me, I’d hold my doctor accountable for prescribing me something I saw in a tv commercial, or not doing the legwork to understand why it could be a beneficial drug.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#130

Post by refurb »

happytoexplain wrote: post #12
cwkoss wrote: post #4

The marketing of medicine in inherently unethical because it seeks to override doctors and consumers information-based evaluations, and instead make a choice based on emotional propaganda. The harm caused by any given medical advertisement is directly proportional to its effectiveness. Every pharmaceutical sales rep is an immoral cancer on our society.

>Every pharmaceutical sales rep is an immoral cancer on our society. This seems like one of the most cleanly horizontally divided opinions in all of the US - where nearly everybody agrees loudly and strongly with it except the wealthy and powerful. I wish a presidential candidate would have the balls to echo this severe but obviously popular thought and fix the fucking system with extreme prejudice.

I think you’ve got a very skewed view of the US population if you think it’s clearly divided populous on this issue.
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