Applbaum claims that Eli Lilly managed to turn aside the threat to Zyprexa sales essentially by " a strategy of creating a shadow science to drown out noncompany-sponsored (and competitors') research reports on the side effects of the drug." The way in which this strategy is most at odds with the drug industry's self-image, and propaganda image presented to the medical profession, of its partnership in the pursuit of hard scientific evidence, is that, "the company treated the medical concerns associated with their drug as a relative and fungible truth--in short, as a brand truth that they had the right and the resources to control. The Zyprexa documents show how Lilly sought to deceive physicians in the United States about the severity of of the side effects, using the physicians' own incomplete knowledge against them." Thus, "An initial estimate is that about three quarters of the 5506 pges of Zyprexa documents are devoted to what Sergio Sismondo (2007) calls the 'ghost management' of science, and much of that to the side effects issue. Research is manipulated into sales fodder. Each claim in the doctor's office should be supported by research, and research is 'ordered,' as though from a shop, accordingly."
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Hooked: Ethics, Medicine, and Pharma: How Does the Drug Industry Exert Power? An Anthropological Perspective
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