Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Pharmaceutical research games

For researchers and the public

Instructions:
  1. You be the researcher
  2. Follow the path researchers face
  3. Make your own choices along the way
START THE GAME

For the pharmaceutical industry

Instructions:
  1. Babble about the free market
  2. Claim that you are operating within that free market
  3. Next pressurise government
  4. Ensure that the regulatory body you run immunises you against litigation
  5. Hide undesirable data from researchers and regulators
  6. Employ public relations firms to spy on critical scientists
  7. Silence critical scientists and Journals with the threat of litigation
  8. Use the resulting cloud of hilarity to publish falsified findings
  9. Mention the "free market" again



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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

10. Say that reported side effects do not exist as they are not backed up by company sponsored data.

11. Justify high cost of pharma products because of capital intensive research budgets.

12. It is only because of the free market that such excellent drugs can only be manufactured in the first place...so consider yourself lucky that big pharma is here.

13. Create new diseases and make the medical profession believe it.

14. Do Direct To Consumer Advertising to make drugs an important lifestyle choice. See your doctor.

15. Mention the free market again.

Anonymous said...

This is good. Fun to expand this to a fully referenced evidence-based game.

16. Write PhRMA guidelines that rewrite all other guidelines, and then use those instead.

CL Psych said...

Wow, this is a GREAT game...

17. Ensure that you compare your drug to an unreasonably high or low dose of your competitor’s medication to ensure your drug appears safe and/or effective in comparison
18. Hire ghostwriters to put the best spin on your data in a manuscript then have big-name academic authors sign their names as if they wrote it to lend extra credibility
19. The aforementioned big-name academics should also be sure to write advertorials, er, review articles showering undeserved praise on your products
20. Pay for travel to lavish conferences, at which your big-name academics will “educate” the audience about the wonders of your latest blockbuster me-too drug
21. Pay off legislators to write friendly legislation (Mitch McConnell comes to mind).
22. Run advertising campaigns indicating how much you care for people’s access to affordable medications (make sure to not laugh when the mic is recording)
23. Mention the free market again
24. While you are extolling the values of said free market, pay off generic drug company to not produce a generic version of your blockbuster drug
25. Have aforementioned big-name academics on your payroll write “treatment guidelines,” published in a big-name journal, in the absence of decent evidence.
26. isseminate as many reprints as possible of studies and review articles favoring your drug as possible – the return on investment is great
27. Run ads targeted toward physicians (journal ads) which contain false claims regarding the safety and efficacy of your products

Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry

Anonymous said...

Hallelulia! Found a blogg that expresses the truth about the "Big Lie" pharma companies.

Although gay marriage is illegal there is no law against these guys being in bed with each other. LOL