First some transparency: I am not nor have I ever been an employee of any drug company nor has anyone in my family. As far as I know, we own no stock in a pharmaceutical company. My connection with the pharma industry has been in two ways: 1) a biotech drug used in an experimental way (Rituxan from Genentech) has provided me with an extended remission for my chronic lymphocytic leukemia and 2) from time to time my earlier company, HealthTalk, and now Patient Power, have received education grants from drug companies where they had no control over what we did.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking about: I think there is an overreaction going on against the pharmaceutical industry that is causing them to internally self-regulate to a degree that only raises costs, slows down new drug development, and limits education of healthcare professionals and the public.

To be fair, there have been many instances of drug company marketers stepping over the line. Some have been fined and maybe one or two have gone to jail. That’s no different than “bad macaronis” in the financial world or even among physicians themselves.

But my experience from the many people I have met at pharmaceutical companies is that they are trying to do a good job, an ethical job, for people with illnesses where their products can make a difference. Increasingly, their efforts to collaborate with doctors on research or education, and to inform the public have been under review, by Senators and Congressmen, by the media, and by their own internal lawyers. It’s made it tough to get things done, or even have a frank conversation with them, because the executives of the drug companies are worried they could make an innocent misstep and fall into political quicksand that would be bad for their shareholders and their industry.

As a patient, who is a bit “in the know,” I think this is a shame. For the middle class and above, the government itself appears to do not much health or disease education, at least what I can see, apart from alarms about acute disease outbreaks and maybe smoking cessation (which is a big deal, of course). Maybe that’s unfair, but I just don’t encounter it.

What you do see are drug company TV and magazine ads and, in the past educational meetings and forums sponsored by drug companies. You also used to see huge sales forces of drug company reps who called on doctors.

Now where are we? The sales forces have been cut back since many clinics won’t let them in. Educational programs, and certainly promotional ones are either heavily regulated or cut back, and TV ads have so many disclaimers for the lawyers that they sometimes have a ridiculous soundtrack (“XXXX may cause blindness in some people or make you hate your mother-in-law, in rare cases…”).

I am hoping we can get to a better place where pharmaceutical companies, as corporate citizens, can take a more active, unfettered and responsible role in educating the average American about their health, including prevention and the full range of treatments. Since the mega drug companies make products for a range of conditions they are likely to get you as a patient for one thing or another sooner or later. So I think they should be supporters of an active conversation about your health and not seen universally as an industry to be disrespected.

I know without Rituxan I might not be healthy enough, or even alive, to write this. And you, too, might depend upon a medicine to be healthy. So should the pharmaceutical company really be handcuffed quite so much and be held in such low esteem?

I think the bull’s-eye should be taken off the back of the drug companies.

You can leave it on the back of the tobacco companies – maybe even Congress too – and, about the banks and the home loan industry, I am still considering that.

I’d love your comments.

Wishing you and your family the best of health,

Andrew