NOT-SO-PUBLIC RELATIONS
slate.msn.com
The standard treatment for sepsis, an infection of the blood, costs
$50 per day, but Eli Lilly has a new drug out called Xigris, which
may not be any better than older treatments but costs $6,800 per
treatment. That's not exactly an easy sell, but Lilly has hired a
PR firm to launch a campaign called "The Ethics, the Urgency and
the Potential," whose premise is that it is "unethical not to use
the drug." "To reinforce the point," writes Carl Elliott, "Lilly
has funded a $1.8 million project called the 'Values, Ethics &
Rationing in Critical Care Task Force,' in which bioethicists and
physicians from various American medical schools will examine the
ethics of rationing certain drugs and services. It is a brilliant
strategy. There is no better way to enlist bioethicists in the
cause of consumer capitalism than to convince them they are working
for social justice. ... It's no mystery, then, why pharmaceutical
companies want to brand themselves with bioethics. But do
bioethicists really want to brand themselves with Pharma? To take
only one example: The pharmaceutical sponsors of the University of
Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and its faculty's projects are
now facing multimillion dollar fraud sanctions (AstraZeneca), a
Nigerian lawsuit for research abuse (Pfizer), massive class-action
payouts (Wyeth-Ayerst), a criminal probe into obstruction of
justice (Schering Plough), an ongoing fraud lawsuit (Merck and
Medco), and allegations of suppressing research data on suicide in
children (GlaxoSmithKline)."
SOURCE: Slate, December 15, 2003
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