A Rant I Didn’t have to Write

I’ve had a lot of frustration brewing around in my heart lately, as scandal after scandal has rocked the pharma industry. It’s wearisome – I try to be a realist about such things, but at core, I remain an idealist with a strong attachment to personal and professional ethics. And it bothers me to see companies committed to maximum sales/revenue, at the cost of losing their souls.

Apparently I’m not alone. I was about to write something up, but another blogger has put forth a very eloquent statement, which in many ways expresses how I feel.

Excerpts:

…I’m also of the opinion that the pharmaceutical industry as a whole has done far more to improve the life of Joe Public than it has to harm it. For every Vioxx or Seroxat, there are at least fifty different drugs that make a huge and positive difference to millions of people’s lives, day in, day out…It’s the relatively recent phenomenon of “Big Pharma” that bothers me. These vast corporate behemoths have pretty much superseded the multiplicity and diversity of small individual companies, bringing in the “buckets of money” mentality that has largely driven out the “patient need above all else” philosophy of 20 years ago….Yet despite all that, I still love the pharmaceutical industry…I just don’t like those in charge of it or their behaviour…there’s a difference between the way that I love the industry and the way some of its cheerleaders do. I love the pharmaceutical industry in a grown-up way. I want it do well and I want it to do good.

Full post here. Thanks, Pharma Giles.