The picture is of the Capitola, California beach on a beautiful fall day last week, the last warm day before temperatures dropped. The fall term is nearly over (yay) and my inbox is stuffed with items I've been marking to blog but somehow never found the time. So here is a whole bunch of them in one go.
First up: a nice piece on direct-to-consumer advertising from Slate. My students know I love to take off on big pharma's fatal attraction for DTC advertising and how it can be directly linked to the problems of Merck's Vioxx. While the Slate writer makes a nice, facile point with his analogy of running shoe ads, there is still a fine line between educating and developing the marketplace versus creating one out of whole cloth.
This piece from MicroArray blog points out an issue that I see within the scope of Anhvita, and that is the propensity of trained monitoring staff within India to 'job jump'. This is creating a work force with great breadth but insufficient depth, and is also contributing to a loss of continuity for sponsors which could directly and adversely effect safety reporting, among other things. We need to create a cultural shift that encourages professional staff to develop all their skills, instead of leaping to the next attractive salary and perks package.
First up: a nice piece on direct-to-consumer advertising from Slate. My students know I love to take off on big pharma's fatal attraction for DTC advertising and how it can be directly linked to the problems of Merck's Vioxx. While the Slate writer makes a nice, facile point with his analogy of running shoe ads, there is still a fine line between educating and developing the marketplace versus creating one out of whole cloth.
This piece from MicroArray blog points out an issue that I see within the scope of Anhvita, and that is the propensity of trained monitoring staff within India to 'job jump'. This is creating a work force with great breadth but insufficient depth, and is also contributing to a loss of continuity for sponsors which could directly and adversely effect safety reporting, among other things. We need to create a cultural shift that encourages professional staff to develop all their skills, instead of leaping to the next attractive salary and perks package.
Here is an update to an item I posted a while back about the Pfizer-Trovan-Nigeria case. In case you thought justice was imminent after the US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision last summer to let the case finally be heard in the US courts and Pfizer's subsequent $75M settlement - think again. Pfizer did indeed fund the settlement, all but $30M of which is going to line lawyers' and Nigerian government officials' pockets, but they also appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. The Supremes have asked the Obama Justice department to render its legal opinion, so we may see a ruling this term. Meanwhile, Pfizer is continuing its one-company crusade to lose the hearts and minds of the prescription-buying public - who is not inclined to cut the pharma industry a break in the best of times - by requiring victims in the case to submit DNA in order to receive compensation. It's all here. One of the salient facts of the case is that there were no medical records left behind from the two week study conducted at Kano in 1996, so it isn't immediately clear exactly what the DNA samples are supposed to be compared to. If the whole thing is not a ploy to avoid paying out compensation to the victims, then Pfizer certainly seems comfortable with giving that very impression.
And speaking of fall days, this one is over. More next time.
