Find It, File It, Flog It—exposing Big Pharma's route to blockbuster profits
...and the fraudulent activities that followed
Something I wrote in 2015
I was royally hacked off when none of my former colleagues in the pharma industry took any meaningful notice of the sage advice I offered in Supply Chain Management in the Drug Industry: Delivering Patient Value for Pharmaceuticals and Biologics, (Wiley, 2011I).
That spurred me on to write a second in 2015. This book presented a caricature of the industry, in the guise of an addictive gambler, as described in the book below:
Big Pharma was crippled by a debilitating addiction many years ago. As with any addiction, lifestyle choices are at the center of the problem. For the addictive gambler, the roots of their demise lie in early success. Seduced by the rush of easy money, it becomes a way of life. The gambler doesn’t feel the need to go out and work, preferring instead to focus on beating the odds. Nothing is as important as the next win, and possessions and relationships often are discarded in order to fuel the habit. By the time the gambler realizes the problem, it is all too late: no home, no family, and few friends, little money, and no prospect of being able to hold down a job
Titled Find It, File It, Flog It: Pharma's Crippling Addiction and How to Cure it , the book aimed to inform stakeholders in the industry (patients, healthcare professionals etc) of what was truly happening underneath. This is the Preface:
“I almost didn’t write this book. My maiden attempt at a book, despite great reviews, was a disappointment in terms of sales. I had been certain the world was hungry to hear the messages within, not just to inform and educate on my speciality subject—strategic management of the supply chain—but also to help catalyze change for the better in the pharmaceutical industry.
As I think back, the important messages were disguised within a relatively high-priced textbook in an industry where the topic of professional management of end-to-end supply chains was as popular as the Conservative Club in Moscow.
Undeterred, I continued to preach the messages at conferences, in professional journals, and through webcasts and podcasts.
The presentation I gave at conferences in the United States and European Union was purposefully provocative. I resorted to giving the drug development and commercialization process a funny name, Find It, File It, Flog It, and semiridiculing the notion of scientists discovering blockbuster drugs in the dead of night, surrounded by test tubes, Bunsen burners and other apparatus involved in deep chemistry.
The audiences were always polite. No one challenged me on what I said, although there must have been a lot of skepticism underneath. The only manifestation of that was when I presented at a conference in Tuscany, where a senior Food and Drug Administration official had a coughing fit halfway through my presentation and had to leave.
She did not return until I had finished.”
The opening of 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.