Wednesday, March 25, 2009

AstraZeneca - Seroquel: the bearded one speaks


Last week's discussions around here about the merits (and demerits) of pharma-industry research seem to be coming at what's either a really good or a really bad time. Take a look at this Washington Post article on the handling of clinical data at AstraZeneca (AZN).

These details have come up during a large array of lawsuits over
Seroquel (quetiapine). And if they're as represented in this article, it doesn't make AZ's marketing folks look very good, and (by extension) the rest of the industry's. We shouldn't be doing this sort of thing, on general principle. But if that's not enough, and it probably isn't, here's a more practical concern: does it take much imagination or vision to think that, with all kinds of health care reform ideas in the air, this sort of behavior might just make Congress want to reform our industry really good and hard?

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