Latest dose of pharma-bashing
Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Handbaglady in Communications, Industry, News
GSK has become the latest focus of media and political scrutiny, scepticism and criticism this week; they stand accused of profiteering from the recent swine flu crisis.
Yet again the pharmaceutical industry is painted as heartless and greedy, only thinking about profits and shareholders. The company’s half year update showed a big increase in demand for its anti-flu drug Relenza and massive pre-orders for the H1N1 vaccine anticipated to be ready by autumn. This is hardly surprising given the current situation.
What is not being so widely commented on by media and political critics is that GSK actually reported a small decrease in overall sales yesterday, despite their swine flu products – largely due to competition from generic drug companies who are now entitled to make the medicines initially developed by the company.
It has been reported that GSK has actually spent £1.2 billion to date in developing and manufacturing its swine flu products, and has committed to donate 10 per cent of its Relenza supplies and more than 50 million doses of its swine flu vaccine to poor countries. I am not saying that pharmaceutical companies are totally altruistic, they are after all businesses with overheads and shareholders but it strikes me that no other industry has to explain and justify its business methods in such a way.
Critics conveniently overlook the fact that pharmaceutical companies such as GSK invest millions of pounds in research to develop new products such as the meningitis vaccine about to be patented by the company. Would it be preferable that huge portions of the NHS budget were spent on developing new treatments instead of the private sector getting involved?
Incidentally, this week the ABPI reported that when it comes to debate around NHS finances, it sometimes feels like the price of medicines gets all the attention when in actual fact, for every £1 spent on healthcare in the UK, just 12p goes on medicines. When you look at how the UK compares to other countries, medicines here are cheaper than elsewhere. The UK is now bottom of the league of 12 comparator countries, behind, for instance, Belgium, Finland and France, and has been sliding down the league table since 2006.
Back to the case in point, it won’t just be shareholders who benefit from the sale of these products. Apparently, GSK plans to recall some staff previously marked for redundancy. In addition, GSK is a British company leading the field and incidentally is one of the UK’s biggest corporate taxpayers.
The fact is that GSK has the talent and capability to eliminate the threat of this wily virus more efficiently than any government or NGO. This is the reason why it was selected by the World Health Organization to produce a vaccine and a fact which surely deserves some national pride.
GSK seems to be smack in the middle of the media firing line and political flack but other companies around the world, such as Roche, Sanofi and Baxter have also all reported better figures in recent weeks, partly due to their swine-flu related products.
To conclude, it does appear that many are using the accusation of swine-flu profiteering as the latest stick to beat pharma with, but let’s not add panic and debate about profiteering to the health scare and common hysteria about the virus that we are currently facing.
Jon
24. Jul, 2009
Great post and some interesting thoughts. Pharma alone do get a rough time, most of the time. What about petrol companies, chemical companies, and other major corporations? In fact car companies are just getting sympathy, or rather crying for sympathy as they are struggling in the “recession” (if you make a rubbish car, it is not going to sell. Not rocket science).
The pharma industry desperately needs to communicate purpose, reason, benefit and their future plans, and especially how they are actively engaged in helping with the swine flu problem.
They just don’t seem to do this very well if at all, and that is worrying.
Jon
26. Jul, 2009
I’ve just heard on Radio 4 (Sunday morning), that quote “the epidemic is a license to print money” for the Pharma companies. What excellent reporting! (Not sure where that quote was from though).