Pfizer/Pharmacia - a growing story

Here is the story so far.

Now, this letter has been published in BrandWeek:

"March 27, 2006

Regarding the article "Bad Medicine" (Brandweek, March 20), your story does great injustice to our CEO and chairman, Fred Hassan.The story unfairly suggests that during his time leading the former Pharmacia Corp., Fred may have been aware of or even encouraged the improper promotion of a growth hormone product by others in the company. The story also makes the baseless insinuation that Fred may have been motivated in encouraging such promotion to increase the value of the company in advance of the acquisition of Pharmacia Corp. by Pfizer in 2003.

Much of this is apparently based on a few words scribbled by Fred at the top of an unsolicited letter from a "Longevity Center" in which Fred requests colleagues to follow up and acknowledge the correspondence.

I can say from my personal experience that Fred routinely puts this kind of notation on dozens of documents each day. He is diligent in striving to assure that every piece of external communications to him gets an appropriate response. It is preposterous to me that this routine action by a diligent and honorable CEO should be framed as some signal to others to do something inappropriate.

I am especially disturbed by the story and its insinuations because Fred Hassan is a CEO who works to embed business integrity into the DNA of every organization he leads. I have seen this first hand at Schering-Plough, where Fred has been deeply engaged in driving a compliance and business integrity program that has become a model for other organizations. Fred is relentless in impressing upon his colleagues that long-term success must be based on doing the right thing for stakeholders, and he leads by his actions and example. The idea that Fred would tolerate, much less encourage, inappropriate promotion of medicines is implausible, as is the idea that he would in any fashion seek to artificially inflate the value of a company that he leads.

By publishing such unfounded insinuations and allegations about a person of such demonstrated integrity, Brandweek does damage to its own reputation.

Brent Saunders svp, Global Compliance and Business Practices Schering-Plough Corp.

Editor's note: The story was not "based on a few words scribbled by Fred," as the writer suggests. Rather, it was based on four lawsuits, several hundred internal documents from Pharmacia, and interviews with eyewitnesses. It was also based on the account of Pfizer, which has admitted in court that Pharmacia distributed Genotropin for anti-aging purposes. Pfizer's own 10-K filing of March 1, 2006, states that those sales are now under investigation by federal authorities. The story made no claims regarding Hassan's personal knowledge of these events. Hassan and his representatives were invited on nine separate occasions, beginning in January, to tell their side of the story. They declined to do so, citing a confidentiality agreement. "

This story is "a grower"!