Post edited 12:10 pm – December 8, 2009 by RevGenetics
As for me, I'm currently in Brussels at the invitation of the European Commission participating in a Workshop Dealing with new technologies and societal needs: Challenges and opportunities for the European innovative pharma industry. Is there anything you'd like me to pass along to my fellow attendees?
-Mark
Personally the challenges for the pharma industry are understandable. A low number of new meds are being discovered or made, and many that are on the market have received bad rap in the public eye as it appears that everyday you see a new drug product that is shown to help in a minor way, and may even hurt many.
I believe the challenge for the european pharma is really to stay in a positive light for the general public, when it comes to new drugs, or drug development. Just the other day, a customer was asking me about a product of ours… and when I mentioned it was encapsulated by Capsugel, they asked if capsugle was owned by any pharma. When I replied yes, Pfizer… they started laughing and said they would never buy a product that was associated to them. Mind you… I believe Pfizer is a great pharma, but having our dietary supplement bashed because of who owns the company that manufactures our supplement really told me how some people see the pharma industry.
The second issue that people see and hear about is how big pharma lobbies hard in the government, and FDA. Then when changes come down from the FDA to ban something like B6, it makes people believe it was big pharma pulling the strings: http://www.naturalnews.com/025…..in_B6.html
These sort of moves that appear to take place between the FDA and the Pharma industry, make it out into the public eye and spills into the supplement market. Now you not only have regular folks thinking badly about big pharma, but the dietary business folk as well.
Lastly we have GSK suing the patent office because the patent office was trying to curb abuse of the US patent system by trying to make some changes,( Remember patents like Amazon's 1 click purchasing, etc?) Just my personal opinion here but I am pretty sure the new changes would have probably affected some pending Pharma patents as well. Heck, If I had lots of stock holders and a big stick, I probably would have done the same thing if I wanted to lengthen the 'review time' of my 'patent pending' apps (while I give myself time to find new things for my stockholders to smile about… besides who would want their patent to be turned down immediately anyway, right?).
The USPTO actually backed down and no changes to curb abuse were ever made: http://online.wsj.com/article/…..13417.html .
Actions like these really make people think badly of big pharma (unless you are a stock holder of course). I have to say, that big Pharma has a lot of work to do, and believe it will take many years to win the hearts and minds back for many folks.
Dr. B, It looks like you have your work cut out for you. I truly wish you good luck… and tell them at the european conference to stop pushing to regulate more dietary supplements as drugs, so that only big pharma's can sell them (If you consider this an oppertunity for securing money from one industry for the drug companies… then you and I will stand at opposite ends of this issue).
The real opportunity here does not come from changing laws and rules to the pharma industries advantage… it's changing people's thoughts on big pharma. In the first, you will cross many and will eventually have a fight on your hands with the public. In the latter, you will have the support of the public, and more importantly it's trust and with this, they will not think twice when buying the pharma's products.
Cheers
A
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