The Year 2017 in Images

2017. Pharma Marketing Network. All rights reserved.

The Year 2017 in Images

TM


“I Literally Learned from This Guy,” Says Shkreli

In a controversial move, Marathon Pharmaceuticals is charging $89,000 a year for a decades-old Duchennedrug that was approved by US regulators in February, 2017.

The infamous “pharma bro,” who gained notoriety after buying an older drug and raising the price by 5,000 percent — and then taunting critics on social media — recently praised Ovation, which Aronin ran, on his web site. “These guys invented price increases,” he wrote. “I literally learned it from them.”

http://sco.lt/50R1yT

http://sco.lt/50R1yT


Allergan CEO Says Martin Shkreli is a "Mentor"

Sarah Hassan was new to the hedge fund world in 2010 when a longtime friend of her father suggested she meet a “rising star” in the industry: Martin Shkreli.

The friend, Brent Saunders, the chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Allergan, said he had had “some phenomenal returns” by investing in one of Shkreli’s funds, Hassan told a federal jury. “Mr. Saunders had suggested we meet up because I was trying to learn about the hedge fund world. He thought Martin could be mentor,” she said.

http://sco.lt/4iGheL

http://sco.lt/4iGheL


Trump Will "Make Pharma Great Again!"

Martin Shkreli, better known throughout the world as “Pharma Bro,” is betting on Donald Trump to bring pharmaceutical jobs back to the U.S.

“Donald Trump is a dream for business people like me,” Shkreli said during an exclusive interview with FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. “I think Trump’s going to make pharma great again.”

http://sco.lt/5algcj

http://sco.lt/5algcj


“They’re Getting Away with Murder!”

President Trump has talked about giving drug companies a big tax break if they bring their wealth back to US shores. But last time they got such a tax break, it didn’t pan out that way. Instead, drug makers used the tens of billions they brought back to the US in the mid-2000s to enrich their CEOs

and drive up their stock prices. They also laid off thousands of workers.http://sco.lt/6HIA9x

http://sco.lt/6HIA9x


PhRMA Ousts Bad Egg Members to Appease Trump

This is supposed to be “PhRMA's way of trying to get rid of smaller companies that engage in the controversial practice of buying older drugs and jacking up the prices.”

But PhRMA knew that some of these companies gouged prices when they accepted them as members (read, for example, “PhRMA Accepts Price Gouging #Pharma Companies Into Its Tent”; http://sco.lt/5a8tNJ and “Big #Pharma Should Secede From PhRMA, Says @John_LaMattina”; http://sco.lt/8UQ2vh).

http://sco.lt/5a8tNJ

http://sco.lt/8UQ2vh


Trump Lets Pharma "Get Away With Murder!"

In the early days of his administration, President Trump did not hesitate to bash the drug industry. But a draft of an executive order on drug prices appears to give the pharmaceutical industry much of what it has asked for — and no guarantee that costs to consumers will drop. But the proposed order does little to specifically call out the drug industry and instead focuses on rolling back regulations, a favorite target of the administration across many federal agencies.

http://sco.lt/5lcuKf

http://sco.lt/5lcuKf


PhRMA Dumps Lots More Money Into Coffers of Pols & Patients

Facing bipartisan hostility over high drug prices in an election year, the pharmaindustry’s biggest trade group boosted revenue by nearly a fourth last year and spread the millions collected among hundreds of lobbyists, politicians and patient groups.

Only a handful of 7,685 health advocacy groups in the U.S. are completely independent of pharmaceutical industry money, according PharmedOut.

http://sco.lt/9KWYcb and http://sco.lt/786qbB

http://sco.lt/9KWYcb

http://sco.lt/786qbB


Regeneron CEO vs. Allergan “Chief”

“It’s nuts,” Schleifer said of Allergan’s controversial move to protect patents by transferring them to a Native American tribe. His remarks were made at the annual Forbes health care conference.




The "Three Stooges of Drug Price Lobbying!". A civil war has broken out among the most powerful players in the pharma-ceutical industry — including brand-name and generic drug makers, and even your local pharmacists — with each blaming others for the rising price of medicine.

“You remember that old photograph of the Three Stooges, their faces cracked sideways and they are pointing at each other?” asked Chester Davis Jr., the president of the Association for Accessible Medicines. “Everyone is doing the finger-pointing, when in fact there is a lot of blame to go around.”

http://sco.lt/6n4Flp

http://sco.lt/6n4Flp


Opioids vs. Tobacco: Can a Case Be Made That Likens the

Two?A lawsuit in Ohio has compared five of the largest pharma-ceutical manufactures in the country to the tobacco industry, alleging they lied to the public about health risks

http://sco.lt/74h44X

http://sco.lt/74h44X


Dancing with FentanylAccording to Huffington Post, "Pharmaceutical sales representatives selling an opioid-based drug 50 times more powerful than heroin filmed a company-made rap video in which they danced with a giant bottle of their deadly fentanyl spray, a federal grand jury alleged in an indictment unsealed in October, 2017.

You can’t make this stuff up!

http://sco.lt/9JOA6L

http://sco.lt/9JOA6L


Merck CEO Frazier Quits Trump Advisory Council

The head of U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co. has resigned from a manufacturing advisory council to the Trump admin-istration in an apparent protest of the president’s failure to condemn in stronger terms the white supremacists who marched and waged violence in Charlottesville, Va.

“As CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism,” Mr. Frazier said in the statement.




Trump Administration vs Opioid EpidemicTwo days later...

Just two days after a top White House official said the United States has the resources it to address the opioid problem without declaring a state of emergency, President

Donald Trump now says the deadly opioid epidemic is indeed a national emergency.


Enough Blame to Go Around for Opioid Epidemic

A Long Island doctor is using a novel defense against federal prosecutors accusing him of overprescribing opioid painkillers: He’s blaming the drug manufacturers.

In a motion pending in the Eastern District, Dr. Michael Belfiore argued that the multiple counts against him of illegally distributing oxycodone should be dropped, and that the “true culprits in the creation of the opioid epidemic, to wit: Big Pharma” should be held responsible.




Pharma Overuses the Letter Z When Naming Drugs

Pharma companies do love to name their drugs using rather uncommon letters. They like to both start their drug names with these letters and mix them throughout the name.

Pharma especially seems to love Z.

For the drug names considered in this study, the letter Z accounts for 2.52% of all letters used. That's roughly 3,300% different than what would be expected (0.07%).

http://sco.lt/8L1BFR

http://sco.lt/8L1BFR


Pharma Gets Drug Names from Octavia Spencer’s Phone Contact List

A March 4, 2017, SNL sketch puts forth a unified theory of drug names, articulated by episode host and 2017 Oscar nominee Octavia Spencer, for Hidden Figures.

The setting: An arbitration hearing in a claim against Merck, for stealing the Spencer character’s “intellectual property.” How? The company “named dozens of drugs after members of my family,” she claims. “They’re just flipping through the contacts in my phone.”

http://sco.lt/8jQ5rN

http://sco.lt/8jQ5rN


Gilead to Baby Boomers: Yo! Get Off Your Butts!

LOL! The ad shows baby boomers lounging on bent trees and wandering aimless through the landscape as if they are in a trance and have nothing better to do!

No doubt millennials are in charge of the storyboards for these ads and it's their way of getting back at their baby boomer parents!

http://sco.lt/98Yumn

http://sco.lt/98Yumn


Marketers vs “Fake” Pharma News

The lesson of fake news for marketers is that you can't depend upon advertising and traditional media to mold public opinion about your brand. Instead, you must work get your customers to share the positive truths about

your company. Meanwhile make sure, as far as possible, that "fake news" about your company dies on the social media vine. http://sco.lt/7kVml7

http://sco.lt/7kVml7


Allergan’s “Fake” Side-by-Side Ads Mislead

Sometimes side-by-side images in drug ads are misleading because they claim to be “unretouchedphotos” whereas they were clearly the same image but one was digitally altered as in the case of a 2016 Kybella ad. This ad for Rhofade, however, says “Illustration only,” which means this is not a real case study of a real person’s response to the drug. http://bit.ly/2vi7lAt

http://bit.ly/2vi7lAt


FDA May Focus Less on Compliance When Reviewing Digital Apps from Silicon Valley


How Much Risk Information is "Just Right" for TV Drug Ads?

FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is exploring the usefulness of limiting the risks in the major statement for most DTC broadcast advertisements for prescription drugs to those that are severe (life-threatening), serious, or actionable, coupled with a disclosure to alert consumers that there are other product risks not included in the advertisement.

http://sco.lt/9Dcq6z

http://sco.lt/9Dcq6z


Will Amazon “Crush” Big Pharma?

Amazon's unrelenting drive to take over the world continues. The latest potential target of the online retailer's ambitions: prescription drugs.

According to reports, Amazon is exploring entering the retail pharmacy market in the U.S., a $400bn a year business that many believe is ripe for disruption. While a final decision has apparently not yet been made, it's not too early for pharma marketers to start considering the prospect of Amazon entering this huge market.




PharmaGuy Marches for ScienceFrom my speech at the Doylestown march:

“Defunding science impacts us on a local level whether the issue is the quality of our air and water, fracking, opioid drug abuse, or the heroin epidemic. We need leaders who believe in data and scientific evidence to help solve these problems.”

Read the entire speech here:http://sco.lt/78EKVl

http://sco.lt/78EKVl


Wishing You a Happy New Year!

Health & Medicine

The Year 2017 in Images