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McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

nytimes.com

31–40 of 160 posts

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#31
As someone currently dealing with chronic pain, suits like this are highly aggravating. It's just another front of the failed drug war.

People who need pain relief get screwed as doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies treat every single patient like they're a drug addict waiting to happen. The real drug addicts will continue to get their pills, while the upstanding members of society writhe in pain.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#32
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 don't like the current system of pharma sales reps either, but black and white thinking like this is not healthy or productive.

Your final sentence isn't conveying any objective information -- in fact, it seems pretty close to emotional propaganda itself. Does that make you an immoral cancer on our society? (No.)

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#33
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?

provide big bounties for drug development. from the government.

we're gonna pay for the drugs either way, so we may as well create our own incentive structures to ensure that it's done right.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#34
post #23
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.

This may come as a shock to you, but marketing pharmaceuticals is really no different than marketing other products. It really comes down to educating consumers about your product. Doctors as decision makers are not some monolithic block of individuals who are super educated about every product on the market and every piece of data. Just developing awareness of new drugs is a huge job. I'd say less than 5% of doctors…

Medicine is absolutely different from other markets. The entire premise of the multi-catastrophic neverending train crash in the US is that it is treated as though it isn't different. Educating doctors is critical, but that doesn't necessitate treating pharmaceuticals like any other product.

As an aside, it's insulting to preface a rebuttal with, "this may come as a shock to you".

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#35
post #23
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.

This may come as a shock to you, but marketing pharmaceuticals is really no different than marketing other products. It really comes down to educating consumers about your product. Doctors as decision makers are not some monolithic block of individuals who are super educated about every product on the market and every piece of data. Just developing awareness of new drugs is a huge job. I'd say less than 5% of doctors…

Except it's not marketing products to doctors, who are the gatekeepers to access. It's marketing to consumers, who aren't informed, and are then used to badger doctors to make them prescribe medicines they heard about on TV.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#37
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.

Marketing can provide information to aid in an information-based evaluation of the best course to take. IMO, that means it’s not inherently unethical, only that done wrong it can be unethical.

I agree that there is, theoretically, the possibility for moral advertising/marketing/promotion in medicine, but the status quo has dropped so low I'm not sure any companies today only use moral methods. I think the key is that moral marketing only serves to inform, and must deliberately avoid any bias or intentional persuasion.

- Supply your molecule for free to all researchers without any strings attached.

- Maintain an inclusive directory of research people have performed with your molecule. Publish a journal of all research and redistribute it for free.

- Commission impartial fact sheets that are surveys of treatments for a given condition - what objective measures of outcomes can be made between treatments, both positive and negative?

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand the vast majority of innovative pharmaceuticals are funded by academia.

The vast majority got their start in academic settings. Most of the R&D money (in particular the expensive phase 3 clinical trials) is spent by pharmaceutical companies.

Yes, so the actual innovation occured in academic settings, as was the query.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#39
post #23
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.

This may come as a shock to you, but marketing pharmaceuticals is really no different than marketing other products. It really comes down to educating consumers about your product. Doctors as decision makers are not some monolithic block of individuals who are super educated about every product on the market and every piece of data. Just developing awareness of new drugs is a huge job. I'd say less than 5% of doctors…

If this system only educates doctors about the benefits of profitable patented effective drugs, they are overprescribing an arbitrary subset of effective drugs because they lack information about non-profitable treatment options.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#40
post #23
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.

This may come as a shock to you, but marketing pharmaceuticals is really no different than marketing other products. It really comes down to educating consumers about your product. Doctors as decision makers are not some monolithic block of individuals who are super educated about every product on the market and every piece of data. Just developing awareness of new drugs is a huge job. I'd say less than 5% of doctors…

The problem here is that pharmaceutical companies' marketing departments have a deep conflict of interest. They're incentivized to encourage doctors to use the drug that makes their company the most profit, not the drug that is best for the patient.

And there is plenty of research demonstrating that this is exactly what they do, and that doctors are indeed swayed by it, because, as you say, they don't have the time to do keep up with it all on their own.

And yes, there is a fundamental difference to consider here: My doctor has a fiduciary responsibility to do what's best for my health, to the best of their ability, and drug marketing compromises that. By contrast, nobody has any fiduciary responsibilities related to which brand of toilet paper I use.

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