pharmaceutical industries & medicine

After some rather shocking discoveries in the last decade (e.g. a well known company faking several issues of a scientific magazine in order to promote drugs, which is proven fact to be done by companies regarding the German magazine “Apothekenrundschau” for years, by the way) society has become increasingly critical of the pharmaceutical industries. Then again, sometimes critical thinking becomes conspirational delusion.

And I always found it very hard to draw the line between these two concepts.

After visiting the World Health Summit in Berlin, I’ll change my pattern of differentiation a bit, and draw the line less conservative from now on. A lot less will be considered conspirational delusion.

(1) I visited the workshop “Evolution and Diseases of Modern Environments” before the World Health Summit, which was mainly concerned with Evolutionary Medicine. People who are considered authorities on their fields talked a lot about “disease mongering” of pharmaceutical industries – creating a disorder in a longtime marketing strategy in order to flood the market with “treatment” afterwards. I was flabbergasted … I had always considered this to be rants of people who had no idea what they are talking about. I’m not sure what to think.

(2) Scientists with a very good reputation more and more doubt the efficiency of widely used drugs; recent papers show that the placebo effect is greater than usually considered, and that many drugs only add very little (if they add at all) to the effect. This is clearly not true for some drugs, but for example looking at many anti-depressants this has been shown to be a very valid argument.

(3) The registration fee for the World Health Summit, which was mainly concerned with human health and well-being, was 1.000 € for 5 days. That is completely ludicrous compared to other events like that.
Some people say that pharmaceutical industries push the prices in order to make it very “interesting” for clinicians, graduates and other people to accept “sponsoring offers”. A company pays your fee, and you wear a sticker, button, or just tell everybody how great their products are.

(4) Now, companies like Bayer Schering, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis or Siemens AG didn’t have booths where they sold t-shirts and stickers – as I would have expected it. They gave symposia, so-called “partner symposia”. This may not be surprising at all to people working in the field, but I was astonished! The CEO of the company would talk, then hand over to the chief of research of biotechnology, and then hand over to a universitarian professor who praised the efforts and research-funding of the company in question.

One example:
Achieving Breakthroughs In Personalized Medicine, Siemens AG, Healthcare Sector:

• Thomas Miller, CEO Workflow & Solutions Division; Siemens AG Healthcare Sector: “Achieving Breakthrough Patient Care Via The Convergence Of Molecular Imaging, Molecular Diagnostics, And Health Informatics”
• Hartmut Kolb, Vice President, Molecular Imaging Biomarker Research; Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.: “Targeted Therapies And Molecular Imaging”
• Heyo K. Kroemer, Chairman, Department of Pharmacology, Dean Medical School; Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald: “Personalized Medicine: From Concept To Practice”
• Hermann Requardt, CEO; Siemens AG Healthcare Sector: Podium Discussion

Don’t get me wrong, I was able to listen to inspiring talks from brilliant scientists! I just wonder about the whole idea, the package in which science was wrapped, so to speak.

(5) On congresses, everyone receives a badge with your name (and sometimes other data) on it. It also had a barcode, which was new to me, and when you entered a hall they “scanned” you (they told you to let yourself be scanned, thus at first I thought it’s just standard procedure – everybody was scanned, always). Since I was wondering what that meant, I looked at the badge carefully after two days. I turned it around, and found, in tiny little letters, written:

Please note that offering your badge to be scanned at exhibition stands or during satellite symposia implies your acceptance that the exhibiting/organizing compenay may contact you, using the contact details as submitted during the registration.

I’m not even sure if that is legal … in any way, it’s completely indecent. I have to add that it is very unusual to have things written on the back of the badge, people don’t really search it for hidden messages …

Conclusion:
No discussion is needed that research needs funding, and working closely connected with the pharmaceutical industries may in some cases be a very good thing for all of us.

But in some, it might not be – and I think we have to be more careful; we mustn’t sell our interest in knowledge, in advancing humanity by means of science.