BrandweekNRX

Here's the reason I wanted to become a surgeon.

Tooooooooooo many drug names to remember in internal medicine!

The Anesthesiologist's Song.

Before my career in the drug industry I actually practiced medicine. I worked as an anesthesiologist, which in Sweden was a combined speciality with emergency medicine.

That is not the case in the U.S.

They say anesthesiologists have coffee stains on their trousers and surgeons have blood stains.

Here's the Anesthesiologist's Song:

WSJ covers not only sagging breasts but also sagging chests.

So yesterday I wrote a story about WSJ and sagging breasts.

My friend and colleague, Scott Hensley, who is the editor of the Wall Street Journal Health Blog appeared pleased with my comments, however, he correctly pointed out that the Wall Street Journal doesn't play favorites on gender, and as an example he told me they'd also written an article about how men use liposuction to create six packs on their chests.

The story Six-Pack Surgery: From Puffy to Buff is well worth visiting and demonstrates that vanity is gender neutral.

It also contains some outstanding before and after pictures . . .

WSJ and sagging breasts.

Sometimes the current BrandweekNRX writer gets criticized, because the topics he chooses are not serious enough. Words like "sensationalism" have on occasion been mentioned.

So I'm not going to write about sagging breasts.

I'll just humbly point out that the Wall Street Journal just did that. You can find the story here.

And it is pretty interesting.

Apparently, according to a new study, sagging breats have nothing to do with breast feeding.

That should be a relief to many women. Or maybe not.

So who comes up with these studies?

In this case it was a man - University of Kentucky plastic surgeon Brian D. Rinker.

No surprise there.

The Vote.

So the Pharmablogosphere is having another vote. Find out what it's about here.

Right now, this is the result:

Political surprise: Pfizer CEO publicly agrees with Dr. Rost Senate testimony.

Bloomberg News today reported unusual news: A lack of health insurance affecting about 47 million Americans is "an outrage'' and must be fixed, Pfizer Inc.'s Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler said.

Hmm, when I said this back in 2004 and 2005, before the Senate HELP committee, Pfizer went nuts, and now this is the gospel of the new CEO?

I'm flattered and befuddled. What a difference one CEO can make.

I have to admit that I'm impressed. But perhaps Pfizer's board knew what they were doing when they gave Kindler the corner office? That I was right, McKinnell was wrong, and Kindler knew what it would take?

"Inadequate insurance coverage, substandard data-sharing systems and insufficient measures to prevent disease are providing more common ground for U.S. politicians in the lead-up to next year's presidential election," Kindler said. He spoke at the Nikkei Global Management Forum in Tokyo.

"This problem has gotten so serious and the issues are so important,'' Kindler said, that "it might rise above politics for a change. Policymakers, led by the public in many cases, will come to the realization that our health care system in the U.S. simply has to be fixed. It's a serious crisis.''

OK, seriously, now I have to take a deep breath. Is this the CEO of Pfizer saying this? Soon we'll hear that Kindler intends to rehire me. That would be cool.

The 47 million people who lack insurance is commonly seen as "a matter of great urgency that we have to address,'' he said.

Hear. Hear.

New York Times picks up BrandweekNRX story.

Two weeks ago I wrote the stories Pfizer CEO Kindler supports Hillary Clinton for President and Pfizer tries to distance itself from CEO's contribution to Hillary.

Yesterday the New York Times, to whom I had forwarded the story, decided to run their own version.

It is called Health Sector Puts Its Money on Democrats.

Of course, you read the news first right here, on BrandweekNRX.

Is there a doctor on the plane?

On my flight back home from Sweden last week came that dreaded call: Is there a doctor on board?

And of course, I had my medical degree; only I hadn’t practiced for almost twenty years.

But that might have been more than the other passengers, so when I started hearing shouts and commotion behind two closed curtains, I decided it was time to rise to the occasion.

As I made my way back, the shouts got stronger, but I couldn’t discern the language or what was said.

Quite a few necks were craning and the fact that terrorism is on everyone’s mind made the calm in the cabin remarkable.

When I pulled back the curtains to the galley, I saw a half-naked man on the floor. Next to him stood a Thai stewardess and a Muslim woman. The woman with a headscarf told me she was a doctor too, and that the man was a diabetic. The airplane first aid kit was already unfolded next to him.

They had just checked his blood sugar and it was rock bottom.

So now the question was if the man who was flailing his naked arms and speaking gibberish simply had overdosed his insulin; if he was drunk, or if there was something else wrong.

He received a glucose injection, and didn’t markedly improve and it was virtually impossible to communicate with him. In his hand luggage we found his medication for a thyroid disorder.

Half an hour passed, his breathing and pulse was fine, skin tone great, and finally the sugar injection seemed to work. He became coherent, and started behaving like a fully reasonable person - an amazing transformation.

It reminded me of my last chopper rescue, back in 1984, when I gave a glucose injection to an unconscious young man, hoping he simply had hypoglycemia. That didn't work and that man never woke up again.

I wish I could take credit for the recovery of the man on the plane, but it was all thanks to the Malaysian doctor in a headscarf.

As for me, I was just happy that the crew hadn’t panicked and tried to make an emergency landing on Greenland, or that I had been the only doctor on board.

Sometimes it can be pretty scary to hear that call – is there a doctor on board?

Chameleon.

So this week I participated in a hearing in the Swedish Parliament on more effective use of pharmaceuticals.

I wasn't the only one presenting, Anders Blanck, the deputy CEO of LIF/PhRMA (the Swedish pharmaceutical industry organization) also spoke for a short while.

He's probably the only PhRMA executive in the world with long stylish hair and a pony tail, but hey, I thought he was cute and this is Sweden, after all.

What he said was, however, more important than his hair.

He strongly stated that "Direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals is not something we like or support."

I couldn't help myself, so I stood up and suggested that if he'd said that in the U.S. he'd been fired. He didn't want to comment on that.

And clearly, what is good and bad in pharma-land, simply depends on what you can get away with.

Here is a song on the theme of a chameleon:

Quote of the day.

In 1899 Charles Duell, the Director of the U.S. Patent Office, suggested that the government close the office because everything that can be invented had been invented.

A quote I will give you from Läkemedelsvärlden, which is normally an excellent pharma magazine in Sweden, will probably be remembered the same way.

In fact, Ingrid Stenberg has written an entire article which is likely to be quoted for the next twenty years as an example of utter ignorance.

Here's how she starts the article: "Doctors bought by the [drug] industry will soon be just a memory."

I know, those Swedes, they're pretty much like the bumbling chef in the Muppet show. And clearly some of the journalists have gone to the same cooking school.