Why SEIU Is Crazy to Believe PhRMA Will Slam J&J's Remicade Campaign

The Service Employees International Union is starting to get some media traction for its protests that Johnson & Johnson does not give health insurance to the janitors that clean its offices. This has led to the ironic situation of the guy who sweeps the floor of the Centocor staffers who market Remicade being unable to actually get any Remicade to treat his rheumatoid arthritis.

Today it emerged that SEIU has asked PhRMA to investigate Johnson & Johnson's use of the documentary Inner State to market Remicade. The SEIU believes the Remicade documentary falls afoul of the ad guidelines that J&J has agreed to abide by, because the documentary doesn't mention its corporate sponsor.

This, presumably, is merely a publicity stunt by the SEIU for its janitor protests. The union can't possibly believe that PhRMA will really investigate J&J. As I've already noted here, PhRMA's guidelines are not designed to police the drug ad business. Quite the opposite, they're designed to hide wrongdoing in the drug ad business -- specifically, they're designed to conceal who is breaking the PhRMA guidelines that J&J signed onto in the first place.

Take a look at PhRMA's first report into who broke PhRMA's guiding principles. Not a single company's name is mentioned -- even though the report  PhRMA received 284 "comments" on issues to do with DTC ads.

To give you an idea of how seriously J&J takes PhRMA's ad guidelines, check out this section of MediaPost's story: "PhRMA has already indicated that it doesn't feel it is appropriate to apply its guidelines--which were created with an eye toward traditional advertising such as a 30-second TV spot--to the documentary, [ Michael Parks, Centocor's vice president/corporate communications] adds."

In other words, Parks doesn't believe the PhRMA ad guidelines apply to all ads. How convenient!

I will give $50 to a charity of Billy Tauzin's choice if, next September, PhRMA's 2007 report names a single drug company as having violated its ad promises.

Comments

[John Mack]

Ed,

I'm with you 100% on PhRMA's inept reporting of violations -- see, for example, "PhRMA's OOA Issues First Report" at http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2006/09/phrmas-ooa-issues-first-report.html

I am happy to tell you that my comment was counted, I think. I'm pretty sure. Probably.

I hope to also be featured in this year's report. Who knows? Maybe PhRMA Intern will return!

Re: Parks vs. SEIU

Your readers can also read more of Mr. Parks' side of the story and the letter that SEIU wrote to pharma in my post "Innerstate: A Correction and Further Criticisms" at http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2007/05/innerstate-correction-and-further.html

I also think the guidelines should cover more forms of DTC advertising and have often said as much.

[Jim Edwards]

My name is Jim, not Ed. Ed runs www.Pharmalot.com

[John Mack]

Sorry, Jim, I did it again! I have no excuse!

[Prescription Access Litigation]

Jim has hit the nail on the head when he says that the PhRMA "guiding principles" are intended to hide, not reveal, questionably DTC tactics by its signatories. They were no doubt created to give the illusion of industry self-regulation at a time when the industry feared Congressional action to reign in and finally regulate DTCA. (A fear that seems to have been unfounded, given the completely lack of backbone displayed when even an extremely modest form of regulation - a two year waiting period for DTCA for new drugs -- failed to make the cut as a PDUFA amendment).

This is why we at Prescription Access Litigaiton last year gave one of our Bitter Pill Awards (http://www.bitterpillawards.org) to PhRMA:

"The Fox Guarding the Hen House Award : For Pushing Toothless Voluntary Guidelines on Drug Advertising" See more at http://www.prescriptionaccess.org/learnmore?id=0018

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