Pharma Blog Watch

Free Lunches and Pens (Pharma Marketing Blog)
In his entry, blogger John Mack takes issue with a Newsweek report that in 2004 pharma companies spent $7.3 billion on "free lunches and pens" for physicians. He did the math and found that "each high prescriber would receive $43,000 worth of free lunches and pens … no one could eat that much lunch or use that many pens!"

In reality, according to Mack, that amount represents all the costs of "sales-rep contacts," which include "wages, bonuses, car, rep expenses, and most importantly, sales aids and other promotional items/expenses. The latter may include physician 'freebies' like compensation to attend conferences, consulting fees, ghost writing services, etc."

Sanofi's Silence (In the Pipeline)
In his blog, Derek Lowe wonders about sanofi-aventis' secretiveness about the delay in approval of its weight-loss drug, asking "[W]here is Acomplia/rimonabant, anyway?"

"It's amazed me for months now that sanofi-aventis can get away with saying nothing at all about the prospects for their potential biggest-selling drug ever," he writes. "I'm not sure what it is about the sanofi corporate culture that makes this strategy seem like a good idea, but they might want to reexamine it."