Trust Deficit

Why do people love to hate pharma?

Tracy Staton — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:41:24 -0400

Pharma took a plunge in its ethical reputation over the past year, according to a new report from the research firm Covalence. What's hurting the industry's image? Lawsuits and settlements and fines, for one thing. The safety questions around the Eli Lilly antipsychotic med Zyprexa and Merck/Schering-Plough cholesterol drug Vytorin--and the companies' handling of the data about those drugs. The dust-up over Paxil and its link to suicidal thinking didn't help, either.

Plus, the media is either tired of covering pharma's good deeds, or it's distracted by election-year politics. Either way, drugmakers' philanthropic efforts aren't getting much play, Covalence found.

Meanwhile, AdWeek took an in-depth look at why pharma seems to be the industry consumers love to hate. And one of the big reasons is the fact that people don't want to be sick enough to need drugs. Sifting through a bevy of recent surveys and studies, the article also concludes that safety scares undermine people's faith in the drugs themselves. And the public doesn't trust pharma to share adverse info on their meds, further undermining that faith--and hurting pharma's rep.

Unlike other industries, pharma can't necessarily mount a warm-and-fuzzy image campaign to turn public opinion around. DTC rules govern how drugmakers advertise their wares. One thing pharma can do, however, is to target its messages more directly to the people who need them, perhaps via the Internet or social networking, the magazine says.

- see the Covalence release
- read the story in AdWeek

Pharma drops again in public opinion

Tracy Staton — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:01:05 -0400

It's not pleasant company at the bottom of this list. According to a new Harris Interactive poll, only 26 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the drug industry--a record that's even worse than Big Oil, and better only than tobacco companies. It's a low point, following a slow-but-steady decline in consumer opinion.

Fair? That's not the point. The question is, do drugmakers intend to do whatever it takes to reverse the trend? Or should they just accept the dubious honor? Given the challenges pharma faces these days, improving public opinion may not be number one on the priority list.

- find Harris Interactive's release
- check out the analysis at DTC Perspectives
- see the Pharmalot item

Survey: Pharma not a good info source

Tracy Staton — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:35:00 -0400

Remember last month when Merck CEO Dick Clark remarked on Big Pharma's "trust deficit?" Well, here's quantitative evidence of it. A European Commission study found that healthcare professionals and payers are "mostly suspicious" of drugmakers as sources of information about drugs. Nearly half of the responders said pharma has too many conflicts of interest to be appropriate sources of general information on medications.

Some of the responses, however, indicated that if drug companies provided a clear distinction between ads and information, they could be valuable repositories because of their intimate knowledge of their products.

The opinions will be factored into decisions about a proposed code of conduct governing the release of info about pharmaceuticals in the E.U.

- see the item at Pharmalot
- check out the PharmaTimes story