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Biotech / Medical : Pharma News Only (pfe,mrk,wla, sgp, ahp, bmy, lly) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (1080)	11/18/1998 10:04:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 1722

11/18 18:30 FEATURE-Patient is king in pharmaceutical marketing By Hester Abrams LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - A revolution is sweeping the marketing of pharmaceuticals, feeding a growing popular appetite for information about health and making the patient king. While governments seek to offload the costs of healthcare onto individuals, ageing populations want to know more and more about looking after themselves, marketers say. The two trends are merging in a corporate race for medicines to enhance the quality of life and make people feel happier. Amid increasing promotion of all kinds of medicines outside the hospital and the surgery, pharmaceutical companies have joined the battle for brands and the huge profits they can generate, communications experts told Reuters. "Ten years from now this will be hugely consumer-driven," said John George, an executive vice-president at healthcare communications specialist Grey Healthcare in London. "Every decade there's something new in the pharmaceutical business. It was biotech, now it's consumer products," he said. "The Lillys <LLY.N> and the SmithKlines <SB.L><SBH.N> -- companies that were traditionally research-driven -- will be as well-known as Fairy Liquid and McVities biscuits to the consumer." PROMOTING PILLS STRAIGHT TO THE CONSUMER The prospect of highly regulated prescription and over-the-counter products being marketed like canned food seems inevitable to London advertising executives, who say U.S. trends are being mirrored worldwide. "There have been concerns about drugs being sold like baked beans," said Leo Burnett Life Sciences creative director David Ireland-Smith. "But how can you compare a heart pill that keeps your grandmother ticking with brands you'd serve her for tea?" The public's hunger for information on health is at the heart of this year's projected $1 billion explosion in U.S. television advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers, experts say. Many see the trend lapping at the shores of other markets too. Promoting named prescription drugs to consumers is banned on TV in Britain and some other European Union countries, where drug promotion is kept for health professionals. "It's a wave that's probably crossing the Atlantic right now. It'll be in Britain first, then France," says Matt Giegerich, president of the largest U.S. consumer healthcare agency, WPP Group Plc's <WPP.L> Quantum Group, based in New Jersey. "There are no borders on the Internet." COMPANIES EYE TELEVISION AND THE INTERNET Some 18 million Americans have sought health and medical information on-line, a survey by Cyber Dialogue Inc showed last month. The sector is covered by some 15,000 Web sites, some of which are starting to offer instant interactive advice. "We have an opportunity now to change the way that medicine is practised and it comes down to a power shift," former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said at an Internet healthcare conference in October. "Now that the Internet can inform the patient, that patient is empowered to work with the physician in order to make decisions that they together can do." U.S. experience suggests mass consumer contacts encourage earlier diagnosis and even disease prevention. "Take toenail fungus. There was no treatment for it and now it's an enormous category," Giegerich said. "People have seen TV ads for (Johnson & Johnson's <JNJ.N>) Sporanox (itraconazole) and are going into their doctors saying 'I've got ugly toenails. It's been bothering me for a long time and I hear it's treatable'." Giegerich cited forecasts that TV ads in the United States for prescription drug advertising, which erupted last year after a relaxation of Food and Drug Administration rules, will account for $1 billion to $1.3 billion of U.S. advertising money by the end of 1998. The fastest growing area of all U.S. advertising -- direct consumer drug advertising on TV -- outstrips all sectors bar automotive in size. But it accounts for only half total spending. Tried-and-tested areas like public relations and direct marketing to physicians and health services account for another $1 billion. "Competition even between ethical prescription products is intense," says Harry Davies at Leo Burnett Life Brands. "There may be relatively small but nonetheless vital differences for both doctor and patient. So it's important to establish a brand to distinguish between those products and express superiority." THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT Cut-throat battles to extend pharmaceutical products' lives beyond patent expiry periods and to secure new markets for all drugs categories have made companies more aware that meeting consumer demand is the key to growth, experts say. "People are recognising that healthcare means much more than the absence of disease," said Quantum's Giegerich. "As the population ages, the prospects of dying become much more prominent and the maintenance of wellness becomes critical." Researchers are even beginning to think like marketers, following Pfizer Inc's <PFE.N> success with its Viagra anti-impotence pill, which sold $400 million in the first quarter after its launch in April. "Viagra crystallised some things I'd been thinking about," Fortune magazine quoted Pfizer chief executive William Steere as saying. "It struck me that a quality-of-life drug for ageing would be a real winner. Look at the volume in cosmetics, which are nostrums that don't really do anything." Pharmaceutical companies are redoubling efforts to take advantage of the market for lifestyle treatments that Viagra has opened up. But they stress that renewed popular interest in cures for wrinkles, baldness, obesity, depression and memory loss will not divert efforts from other major disease areas. "The development of so-called lifestyle therapies will prove to be a lucrative business for the pharmaceutical industry, as consumer demand for such products will only increase as quality of life expectations continue to rise in future," market analysts Reuters Business Insight said in a recent report.

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (1080)	11/18/1998 10:20:00 PM
From: chirodoc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

boy anthony you do find great articles i see that merrill lynch health care fund also like sepr which is a large holding of mine my portfolio is about 1/3 internet 1/3 drugs/medical 1/3 financial largest holdings are pfe, mtc, sepr, anik with a smattering of lly, chir what are your pharma/bio holdings? curtis

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (1080)	11/18/1998 11:56:00 PM
From: chirodoc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

anthony here is the contrarian viewpoint got this email (ps i am also an herbalist) i think that a lot of it is scare tactics a small grain of truth though won't make me sell mtc--no way -The USDA is licensing internationally a technology that can put our herbs at risk, reduce biodiversity and cause widespread famine or expensive food crops. Montsanto's Delta and Pine Land subsidiary is applying to license a genetically altered technology (developed with US tax monies!) that will cause sterility in second generation seeds. Farmers would be forced to purchase seeds from Montsanto every year instead of saving seeds. National applications for this technology are moving forward - or have issued - in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Africa, most European countries, and probably more jurisdictions. Scientists warn that, under certain conditions, the trait for seed sterility will flow, via pollen, from Terminator crops to surrounding plants, making the seeds of neighboring plants sterile. This has two implications. First, farmers who do not purchase Montsanto seeds may find that their saved seeds are sterile, causing widespread famine and die off of annual plants. Heirloom strains could die off, by picking up the inability to reproduce through cross pollination. Secondly, weeds and wild plants which are growing adjacent to Terminator crops may also pick up the sterility characteristics. Secondly, the seeds will have tetracycline residues, which can alter the probiotic balance of our bodies, those of wild animals which feed upon the crops and soil bacteria. Since it is unlikely that such crops will be identified in grocery stores, people will harm their bodies unsuspectingly.