People need to wake up to how insidious Pharmaceutical companies are. Shame on anyone who continues to work for them (I did once and I left as soon as I discovered the truth about them).
So far it's my estimation that the top 5% of management are sociopaths, typical of most corporations. They make a good many decisions I'd categorize as profiteering, but under some extenuating circumstances. Regulatory burdens are consistently high and unpredictably catastrophic over a given 20 year period. Profiteering is required to keep cash reserved for fines and lawsuits.
Below that echelon are a bunch of normals who want to use their knowledge to help people and make a living doing so.
In my experience - all of senior management were sociopaths (if not actual felons)...
Driving motive was price per share - the company as a whole could actually care less about the patients being treated
Main driver for R&D was to make things "manageable" as opposed to finding cures. I have no proof, but I am convinced there were plenty of actual cures sitting on the shelves of the research labs - the problem was they could not find a way to make the condition "manageable". Manageable = scripts = profit. Cures = one time sale = no ROI.
The culture bred internally was one of cut-throat pirates who would knife each other in the back and sell their grandmothers into prostitution to get a promotion. This went from the maintenance guys up to the Division heads. It was everywhere and done on purpose by upper management - they wanted only the most heartless immoral characters to excel and rewarded deviant behavior. The more devious you were, the higher you rose.
Wastefulness was off the chart at the expense of sick people paying incredible prices for the drugs. Corporate jets for exec. wives to shop in Paris, catered lunches for every meeting (no matter how small or what department), town cars used in lieu of taxis or trains. Personal carpentry, decorating and IT Support for Execs homes., luxury cars given as bonuses to top sales people. Regular Sales Junkets to the Caribbean (where even mediocre sale people were allowed to spend lavishly), lavish fees paid to models and sports celebrities for product endorsements...
I felt dirty when I came home every day. Would NEVER work in pharma again - would rather sweep the streets and sleep with a clear head.
I can't speak to most of that, and I don't have any special knowledge so I'll grant that you are probably right about most of that, at least in the case of your previous employer.
I'm interested in continuing one line of thought though: cures sitting on the shelves. I don't know that that is true or false. What bothers me about that is that our attitude towards drugs is so backwards. We could develop some of the same drugs we do now and some entirely new ones and legalize them for enhancement of cognitive function and mental health. Instead we pathologize normal spectrum humans and require prescriptions and tests in what amounts to a systemic attempt to even the playing field by limiting the benefits to only those who need them daily. Sales of anti anxiety and stimulants and nootropics and psychedelics for enhancement would be huge and vastly profitable. They could find development of one time use cures like antibiotics which are desperately needed. Why is our attitude so insane about this?
Working in Pharma was a HUGE eye opener to me as to how sociopathic multi-national corporations can be allowed to become. The thing I probably felt to be most disturbing however, were the multitude of sheep-like employees who were perfectly content in their denial - and still are.
They had good salaries, bonuses and health insurance, so the fact that they were working on a drug product (say like a certain anti-depressant that produced brain ZAPs or suicidal tendencies documented as side effects) did not phase them at all. Patients or doctors who expressed concern were just "haters" (no, really, this is the juvenile level at which pharma people function - as if what they produce is a reality TV show) and any documented side effects were just "the cost of delivering a treatment that "customers" demanded and worked perfectly fine for a lot of patients". It was like working with a bunch of Stepford wives. All of them swooned over the CEO and President of US Pharma as if these people were rock stars - it was incredibly creepy and VERY cult like. I don't think I ever worked in a place where more people had exotic luxury cars as PC wallpaper. So glad I got out when I did.
As far as cures - like I said, I have no concrete proof of my assertions other than what my R&D friends would tell me off the record - but for example - one friend swore to me that they already had a permanent cure for male pattern baldness sitting on the shelves - FOR YEARS - the problem was that they could not synthesize this agent into a regular treatment (which would have been exponentially more lucrative). So basically they just sat on this compound until they could figure out how to turn it into a regular treatment. One could argue that a male pattern baldness cure is not the same as a cure for cancer, but there were also rumors that a permanent treatment for type 2 diabetes was shelved as well and it begs to ask how many other cures they have sitting around for debilitating illnesses...
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trollification ago
People need to wake up to how insidious Pharmaceutical companies are. Shame on anyone who continues to work for them (I did once and I left as soon as I discovered the truth about them).
necron30 ago
What truth do you speak of?
So far it's my estimation that the top 5% of management are sociopaths, typical of most corporations. They make a good many decisions I'd categorize as profiteering, but under some extenuating circumstances. Regulatory burdens are consistently high and unpredictably catastrophic over a given 20 year period. Profiteering is required to keep cash reserved for fines and lawsuits.
Below that echelon are a bunch of normals who want to use their knowledge to help people and make a living doing so.
Is this fair? What do you think?
trollification ago
In my experience - all of senior management were sociopaths (if not actual felons)...
Driving motive was price per share - the company as a whole could actually care less about the patients being treated
Main driver for R&D was to make things "manageable" as opposed to finding cures. I have no proof, but I am convinced there were plenty of actual cures sitting on the shelves of the research labs - the problem was they could not find a way to make the condition "manageable". Manageable = scripts = profit. Cures = one time sale = no ROI.
The culture bred internally was one of cut-throat pirates who would knife each other in the back and sell their grandmothers into prostitution to get a promotion. This went from the maintenance guys up to the Division heads. It was everywhere and done on purpose by upper management - they wanted only the most heartless immoral characters to excel and rewarded deviant behavior. The more devious you were, the higher you rose.
Wastefulness was off the chart at the expense of sick people paying incredible prices for the drugs. Corporate jets for exec. wives to shop in Paris, catered lunches for every meeting (no matter how small or what department), town cars used in lieu of taxis or trains. Personal carpentry, decorating and IT Support for Execs homes., luxury cars given as bonuses to top sales people. Regular Sales Junkets to the Caribbean (where even mediocre sale people were allowed to spend lavishly), lavish fees paid to models and sports celebrities for product endorsements...
I felt dirty when I came home every day. Would NEVER work in pharma again - would rather sweep the streets and sleep with a clear head.
necron30 ago
I can't speak to most of that, and I don't have any special knowledge so I'll grant that you are probably right about most of that, at least in the case of your previous employer.
I'm interested in continuing one line of thought though: cures sitting on the shelves. I don't know that that is true or false. What bothers me about that is that our attitude towards drugs is so backwards. We could develop some of the same drugs we do now and some entirely new ones and legalize them for enhancement of cognitive function and mental health. Instead we pathologize normal spectrum humans and require prescriptions and tests in what amounts to a systemic attempt to even the playing field by limiting the benefits to only those who need them daily. Sales of anti anxiety and stimulants and nootropics and psychedelics for enhancement would be huge and vastly profitable. They could find development of one time use cures like antibiotics which are desperately needed. Why is our attitude so insane about this?
trollification ago
Working in Pharma was a HUGE eye opener to me as to how sociopathic multi-national corporations can be allowed to become. The thing I probably felt to be most disturbing however, were the multitude of sheep-like employees who were perfectly content in their denial - and still are.
They had good salaries, bonuses and health insurance, so the fact that they were working on a drug product (say like a certain anti-depressant that produced brain ZAPs or suicidal tendencies documented as side effects) did not phase them at all. Patients or doctors who expressed concern were just "haters" (no, really, this is the juvenile level at which pharma people function - as if what they produce is a reality TV show) and any documented side effects were just "the cost of delivering a treatment that "customers" demanded and worked perfectly fine for a lot of patients". It was like working with a bunch of Stepford wives. All of them swooned over the CEO and President of US Pharma as if these people were rock stars - it was incredibly creepy and VERY cult like. I don't think I ever worked in a place where more people had exotic luxury cars as PC wallpaper. So glad I got out when I did.
As far as cures - like I said, I have no concrete proof of my assertions other than what my R&D friends would tell me off the record - but for example - one friend swore to me that they already had a permanent cure for male pattern baldness sitting on the shelves - FOR YEARS - the problem was that they could not synthesize this agent into a regular treatment (which would have been exponentially more lucrative). So basically they just sat on this compound until they could figure out how to turn it into a regular treatment. One could argue that a male pattern baldness cure is not the same as a cure for cancer, but there were also rumors that a permanent treatment for type 2 diabetes was shelved as well and it begs to ask how many other cures they have sitting around for debilitating illnesses...