My 12 year battle with Big Pharma, and how the end could be in sight...in a good way!
Setting the record straight on developing, manufacturing, and distributing drugs
Something about me and my business
It occurred to me this morning, while I was washing a few glasses in the kitchen sink, that I should tell subscribers a bit about what I’ve been doing with my business for the last 12 or so years. For 9 of those years, I was battling Big Pharma inside the tent, while also providing consultancy services in clinical trial and commercial supply chains for biopharmaceutical products. They knew what I was saying was right but chose to ignore it—the lure of making ungodly amounts of cash was far too great.
With my expulsion from LinkedIn in August 2021, I’ve had to continue with Inside Pharma and X (formerly Twitter), which probably isn’t a bad thing, as the news I was spreading was depressing for Big Pharma companies such as Pfizer, AZ, GSK, Merck, J&J, etc…
…thing is though, it’s been just as hard outside the tent getting people to take what I’m saying seriously, as the public impression seems to be that you must be a scientist or doctor to speak on the topic of medicinal products.
This is me…
In 2011, Supply Chain Management in the Drug Industry: Delivering Patient Value for Pharmaceuticals and Biologics was published by Wiley. At the end of chapter 17, the concluding chapter, I wrote the following:
The third milestone [from Supply Chain Management in the Drug Industry] was to help catalyze change in this industry, and hopefully, the book has sparked a desire to contemplate a better way to develop and run pharmaceutical supply chains. In my opinion, that change can happen only when there is a massive redefinition of business models, as discussed above. This, in turn, should drive toward patient-centric supply chains founded on sound SCM [supply chain management] principles, If the third key milestone were to come to fruition, the author believes that the fourth would be an eventual outcome—those in the industry would start to realize the importance of SCM and become passionately interested in moving the profession forward.
That book had excellent reviews, but as you would expect, the established system that was the pharmaceutical industry then, just as it is today, did not heed the cautions. Changing tack to an easier to understand book, I used Amazon CreateSpace (now Amazon KDP) to self-publish a follow up book titled: Find It, File It, Flog It: Pharma’s Crippling Addiction and How to Cure it. I resorted to giving the drug development and commercialization processes a funny name, Find It, File It, Flog It, and semi-ridiculing 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 may well have been skepticism underneath.
As it turned out, for the second time, neither the pharmaceutical industry nor the world outside of it were ready to seek out the messages. That was in spite of another excellent review, this time from Kirkus, Amazon’s recommended book reviewer, that can be found right here.
Putting my thinking cap on again in late 2018, I decided that a conference workshop might get the messages out further and wider. This is the summary of the event:
“On May 8th, 2019, a group of clinicians, patients, representatives of relevant charities, experts in product development, legal, regulatory and supply chain specialists gathered in Wales, with the aim of examining that claim, based on facts and evidence.
The day was organised in workshop format, and the day’s session was titled “MEDICINES FOR THE 21st CENTURY: Safe, Better, Cheaper”. It involved in-depth dialogue and transfer of knowledge, over three panel sessions, between invited attendees and panel members, considering issues and opportunities in relation to safe medicines, better medicines, and cheaper medicines.
Proceedings over the day were recorded on video, and live polling was used to collect inputs from those in attendance.”
In the white paper I collated following the conference, the suggestions below stood out like sore thumbs:
• Set up multi-disciplinary education.
• Teaching children in schools about meds, what they cost, how they’re produced, the importance of taking them correctly, and the impact when patients don’t do so.
• Educating patients regarding the medicines they use rather than prescribing and then the patient looking at the information slip that comes in the box.
Yes, of course, that’s it! The pharmaceutical industry was effectively a big black box and those inside were happy for it to stay that way. In counter, it seemed to me at least, that the world needed multi-level education on the fundamental principles and processes that apply to the development, manufacture, and distribution of drugs. This has, for so long, been a no-go area.
Then I thought of the words of the great Eli Goldratt—sacred cows make great steaks!
That set me on a course aimed at developing a virtual education program for university students’ studying relevant degree subjects. Fortune then smiled on me, as not long after I was contacted by the careers department from the School of Applied Sciences at a university just down the road from me in Wales, the University of South Wales (USW). It has been run as a pilot program and feedback has been received. It went down pretty well.
Then, as if we needed reminding, the SARS-CoV-2 enigma broke. Amongst the unfolding fear and confusion, supply chain questions began to emerge from unexpected quarters, not normally associated with such matters. Almost overnight, a new audience searching for honest answers to the conundrums they had observed sprung up. That prompted me to self-publish What Patients Need to Know About Pharmaceutical Supply Chains, released in March 2021.
At the beginning of January 2022, I started a Substack titled Inside Pharma, which I hope I’m safe in saying has gone down pretty well with subscribers here?
The next stage, hopefully…
I’m hopeful that the next stage will be a second book for Wiley—I have a contract and hopefully it will be agreed this week, outline details below:
Title: Transforming the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
Subject Matter: Pharmaceutical science and industry
Level and Readership: Graduate level students, researchers, and professionals
This book will set the record straight on what is takes to develop, manufacture, and distribute new drugs.
Yes, that was me…
[Note from Hedley: As well as the above, the work I do fighting the jabs is pro bono, including expert witness statements. Any lawyers listening are welcome to make contact. The downside is that Inside Pharma paid subscribers offer the lifeline that keeps me going. If you can affored it, and wish to convert to paid, I would be eternally grateful. Me thinks things are going to hot up in the supply chain as product recalls, etc, begin to hit the news!]
Keep going Hedley, there’s a long queue of rats following your flute!
Waiting for lawyer to come back to me, they may think I’m some raving anti Vaxxer but they are already walking in v damage space, let’s see….
I enjoy reading your content very much and to some extent have applied them to my work - I do logistical solutions (getting stuff where it needs to be) in that am a heavy plant operator as well as a steel fabricator
Most supply chains are the same it's just the products that have their differences. You opened my eyes to the abuses that were occurring - thank you