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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

#61

Post by raheemm »

refurb wrote: post #23
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.

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…

You make a good point. I wonder how is drug marketing handled in places like EU. How do their doctors learn of new drugs and decide which meds to prescribe?

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#62

Post by refurb »

dwaltrip wrote: post #55
refurb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This may come as a shock to you, but educating the consumer is not the primary purpose of advertising.

A huge part of it is education when it comes to drug advertising.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#63

Post by bob33212 »

khawkins wrote: post #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.

I see comments like this on every single opioid news thread.

I'm sure that you are being honest about feeling that you need to take opioids every day, but I'm sure that you understand the addictive nature of the pills and why we should avoid making more people addicted.

I have had a total of two opioid pills in my life and I could feel exactly how it could take over.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#64

Post by pmart123 »

nitrogen wrote: post #54
mr_crankypants wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Maybe an alternative to drug marketing would be to have an independent national or international group (e.g. NIH or CDC) inform doctors about new drugs based on their prior prescriptions, and to present the preregistered clinical trials at medical conferences just like any other research result to reach the rest.

At the same time, when a breakthrough happens like with Gilead’s hep c drug, a single governing body is far less likely to educate and inform doctors that a major disease can basically be cured even if all the evidence points this to be the case. Think about how long it took the food pyramid to be changed despite all the evidence that you should be eating six loafs of bread each day.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#65

Post by 3xblah »

Cha-ching. (Sound of analog cash register closing.)

http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/states-want-their-cu...

"There is an enormous need in developing countries who don't have access to pain relief, it's a human right to have access to pain relief."

Are we supposed to believe demand was being fueled by "developing countries"?

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#66

Post by refurb »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #52
refurb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not all marketing is "educating consumers about your product". Some of it is manufacturing a desire for your product. Look at car ads. Do they say "The new 2019 models are available"? A few do. Do they say "This car gets better gas mileage" or "This car is safer"? A few do. Most say "If you drive this car, you'll get the hot girl". That's not "educating consumers". That's trying to make consumers want your product on…

A very interesting read for me was an FDA survey on direct to consumer TV ads for drugs.[1]

A few of the negative findings:

-Eight percent of physicians said they felt very pressured to prescribe the specific brand-name drug when asked.

-In addition, about 75 percent of physicians surveyed believed that DTC ads cause patients to think that the drug works better than it does, and many physicians felt some pressure to prescribe something when patients mentioned DTC ads.

And positive findings:

-Many physicians thought that DTC ads made their patients more involved in their health care.

-Most physicians agreed that because their patient saw a DTC ad, he or she asked thoughtful questions during the visit.

-The study demonstrated that when a patient asked about a specific drug, 88 percent of the time they had the condition that the drug treated.

[1]https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/impact-...

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#67

Post by sgt101 »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #38
ls612 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that isn't the case. The fundamental research occurs in academia, but early development which includes working out how to deliver it, how to mitigate side-effects and then the clinical trials. Getting a drug into use is very distant from finding compounds in a lab.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#68

Post by reaperducer »

harperlee wrote: post #58
gringoDan wrote: post #24

For better or for worse, consulting companies exist to: 1) Enrich their partners 2) Lend credibility to their clients Consulting firms are hired based on an "appeal to authority" fallacy. Companies don't want to make hard/unpopular decisions, so they outsource them to consultants. Data point: management consulting is one of the industries that is hit hardest by a recession. [0] If consultants truly provided value, th…

Overly cynical. All companies exist to provide profits to their owners. Your argument about the datapoint can also be argued for lending: credit disappears when it’s most needed. It must be completely and utterly useless, then. Or perhaps when a crisis strikes, if you want to minimize spending, you first eliminate consultant bills, instead of, idk, firing internal employees? Part of the value of a consultant is that…

Overly cynical.

All companies exist to provide profits to their owners.

Overly simplistic.

Not all companies exist to provide profits to their owners. There are thousands of companies in the U.S. and elsewhere which exist for other reasons.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#69

Post by theaustinseven »

refurb wrote: post #60
mr_crankypants wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

My counter to your comment, and my own personal experience, is that doctors are fully aware of the manufacturers conflict of interest. They know that the drug companies will present everything in the best possible light. Other things that exist to counter this bias are competitors, who will provide a different perspective and most importantly, the FDA that regulates all pharmaceutical promotion for accuracy and will…

Yeah, but this starts to break down when the pharmaceutical representatives can give laundered incentives(fancy "educational" dinners, "educational" yacht parties, etc.) to prescribe their product. In the US, pharma reps can see the prescription amounts of doctors to verify that they are actually prescribing their product(last I heard from a pharma CRM company in 2016). This seems deeply and fundamentally unethical.

Then you bundle all that up with the various studies that show that doctors(as with all professions) do a poor job with continuing education so that they are further inclined to take the recommendation from the pharma reps(which can be seen in the roots of the opioid crisis), I don't think we're in a very good place from a regulatory standpoint.

Re: McKinsey Advised Johnson and Johnson on Increasing Opioid Sales

#70

Post by sgt101 »

cwkoss wrote: post #21
gringoDan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I find the argument that humans will stop studying pharmacology if they can't monopolize their results quite unconvincing. Current pharma co R&D and innovation only effectively investigates the benefits of drugs with recent patents (with enough years remaining to monetize). There is moral validity to profit-seeking investment in drug trials which find effective treatments, but the current system enables this only wit…

>I find the argument that humans will stop studying pharmacology if they can't monopolize their results quite unconvincing.

agree

>Current pharma co R&D and innovation only effectively investigates the benefits of drugs with recent patents (with enough years remaining to monetize).

Can you elucidate the connection to your first statement - I don't see how that follows.

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