Thinking Pharma: Who’s been Carrying Pharma?

Didn’t anyone else notice?

As a part time cartoonist I was invited to attend ‘The Stanleys’ at Darling Harbour in Sydney Australia this year.

It was the cartoonists’ Annual Conference, Award Night, and Community Celebration.

The Award has been going for some 25 years, but the Australian Cartoonists Association is much older.

It was founded back in 1924, and the cartoonists have been scribbling away ever since.

The mainstream news media were the major sponsors for the event.

It was a splendid occasion with much to celebrate.

However, I couldn't help thinking that the sponsors may not have been feeling quite so cheerful.

They are dying the slow death of a billion blogs, and I wondered who will employ the cartoonists after the last edition hits the pavement.

Carrying the Can

Pharma also has much to celebrate about the success it has enjoyed over the last 25 years.

Who do you think has been supporting the industry, in the same way that the traditional media has been supporting their cartoonists?

It’s tempting to think that Pharma’s customers have been providing their support base.

But the actual picture may be a little different.

Until recently, Pharma has enjoyed enormous support from the general public and from its regulators. A sometimes cosy atmosphere of trust was developed over the years,

Sadly, that trust appears to have been abused by Big Pharma. Although, like the cartoonists nobody much wants to talk about what the consequences of that abuse might be.

If you have an appetite for fifteen hours of video tape, you can download the proceedings of the FDASM talk fest.

You’ll find scant reference to the issue of supporting Pharma on the presenter blog postings.

And you’ll find a huge divide between the thoughtware of the presenters’ blogs and the commentators’ blogs.

This quadrant report produced by Thinking Insights’ analysis show just how divergent the parties are. Check out the relative importance that each attributes to ‘patients’.