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July 01, 2004

The truth about big pharma

Marcia Angell's tells The Truth About the Drug Companies in this month's issue of The New York Review of Books. Really. I know because I deal drugs to support my contemplative lifestyle. Mostly antihypertensives, self-injectable epinephrine, intranasal corticosteroids...the really hard stuff. Don't panic, I'm not a detail man. I'm just an advertising copywriter. A tired, bitter advertising copywriter--for all the reasons Angell's article describes, and more.

Luckily, this is just a temporary job. I plan to return to grad school next year. Philosophers are prone to fits of self-scrutiny about whether their work is important. Having seen what passes for "important" and "real" in other circles, I'm never going to agonize about the importance of philosophy again.

EDIT: I should add that I got into this business because I am pro-drug. I fervently believe in better things for better living through chemistry. What I discovered was exactly what Angell describes in her article--namely, that pharmaceutical industry is largely about marketing rather than R&D. Most heavily-promoted drugs are of the me-too variety. Big drugs tend to be variations on the a successful molecular theme, like the statin, the SSRI, or the ACE inhibitor. If you have truly superior product, you don't need to market it as intensely. Marketing shines when you want to promote a mediocre product against a mediocre field.

A big chunk of R&D spending goes towards tweaking old drugs to make them more consumer-friendly: easy to swallow, sustained release, good tasting, or what have you. That's all very well, but it's on a social and intellectual level of building a better TV dinner or improving cup holders suspension in SUVs. It's not the kind of spending that drug companies should be able to point to to justify spiraling drug prices.

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Comments

One very real benefit of what you're doing is that it'll probably make it easier for you to get through a PhD program. There's nothing to get you through the rough patches of grad school like a firm awareness of what else you might be doing in order to earn your living. (I haven't quite figured out anything for the rough patches of dealing with the job market.)

There's nothing to get you through the rough patches of grad school like a firm awareness of what else you might be doing in order to earn your living.

Word. Mill's competent judges and all that.

Also, I'm training like a Ninja for faculty politics. My Madison Avenue fighting technique will be unstoppable!

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