Pfizer is learning there is a kernel of truth in the saying “the internet never forgets.” More than three years after the offense, the drugmaker has received a telling-off from the U.K. drug promotion watchdog over a retweet by one of its employees.
The employee posted the retweet, which Pfizer has accepted brought discredit on the pharma industry, on the November 2020 day when the drugmaker reported the first data on its COVID-19 vaccine.
Back then, one of Pfizer’s U.S. employees tweeted, “Our vaccine candidate is 95% effective in preventing COVID-19, and 94% effective in people over 65 years old. We will file all of our data with health authorities within days. Thank you to every volunteer in our trial, and to all who are tirelessly fighting this pandemic.” A senior employee in the U.K., plus four other U.K. staffers, retweeted the post.
The retweets brought the post within the jurisdiction of the U.K. Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) but went unnoticed at the time. That changed in February 2023, when a complainant with a history of writing to the PMCPA about Pfizer’s alleged misuse of social media to “misleadingly and illegally” promote its COVID-19 vaccine fired off another message to the U.K. watchdog.
The complainant noted that the tweet lacked absolute efficacy rates or safety data. While accepting that the post was from years ago, the complainant contended that it was still relevant because it contradicted Pfizer’s earlier claims that “previous offenses were just one-offs.” The complainant asked the PMCPA to consider potential breaches of five clauses of the code.
In response, Pfizer put the Twitter post in context, telling the PMCPA that the senior U.K. employee had 321 followers and had completed social media training in October 2019. But the drugmaker offered little resistance and accepted that it had breached all five clauses, including the accusation that it brought discredit upon and reduced confidence in the pharmaceutical industry.
The PMCPA panel said “it was not necessarily unacceptable for a company to refer, in very general terms, to its pipeline,” but noted that pharmas must consider their language, context, location, layout, intended audience and overall impression. The panel also queried whether a social media platform was the appropriate forum to share such information and questioned the effectiveness of Pfizer’s responses to earlier breaches of the code.
“The panel considered that the corrective and preventative actions taken following previous breaches of the code with respect to employee activity on social media had not been implemented to the standard which was expected or required,” the panel wrote. “Activity which was clearly outside of company policy had not been taken down or deleted.”