FIND IT, FILE IT, FLOG IT: PHARMA’S CRIPPLING ADDICTION AND HOW TO CURE IT
Chapter 2: Return to a Misspent Youth
CHAPTER 2 Return to a Misspent Youth
It wasn’t always like this
It has recently struck me that the pharmaceutical industry for many people has always been the same as it is today. A trade journal reporter declaring “Pharma has traditionally been business-to-business” confirmed this realization.
This is certainly not the case, and those of more mature years, such as myself, remember a different time. The reporter’s comment made me wonder how this perception occurred and how widespread it was.
If the misconception is common, then I should explain. When today’s drug companies were in their infancies, probably in the 1950s, things were very different. GlaxoSmithKline (then Glaxo) started by making powdered milk for babies. Beecham’s (now GlaxoSmithKline) was famous for its flu powders, Johnson & Johnson was famous for baby hair shampoo, and Novartis wasn’t even a twinkle in its grandfather’s eye.
Blockbusters hadn’t been invented, and Big Pharma companies generally had clear views of the customer constituencies they were serving. All had an underpinning focus on the need to satisfy patients first. The words of George W. Merck, the founder of Merck & Co, provides evidence:
“We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been!”
Are these words now lost in the mists of time?
We hope to find out as we progress.
VIEWS, OBSERVATIONS, AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE AUTHOR
“During my early days at Bayer manufacturing in Wales, the manufacturing and supply process was pretty much integrated, from the point where raw materials arrived at the back door and the finished product was made and sent directly to customers—hospitals, Pharmacies, and sometimes patients—in the home market and to other Bayer entities around the globe.
Those Bayer entities had local presence and distribution capabilities in their own home markets. Links with customers were direct, and the staff at Bayer, the company holding the license to sell the products, could handle customer complaints.
The staff making Alka Seltzer for Europe had a standing joke. A polystyrene packing piece was at the top of each glass bottle as a cushion to prevent the tablets from moving and breaking. It was a frequent occurrence for customers to send the piece back to the plant with a complaint that it wouldn’t dissolve. The reply was always polite and understanding, but It was hard to resist a wry smile.”
That was life before the blockbuster era. Let’s go back to the days of Big Pharma as a little boy in short trousers.
Rich pickings begin
Pickings began to get rich starting in the mid-1970s, mostly from the battle of the stomach ulcer drugs Tagamet (Smith Kline & French) and Zantac (Glaxo).