A new corporate villain - drugmakers?

Drugmakers do have a stronger case to make than the tobacco industry, says Daynard, who has led efforts to make that industry legally responsible for tobacco-induced deaths, diseases, and disabilities. "What the drug industry can always do is say, 'Well, that was a bad product. We're sorry about that one. And we should have put a somewhat different label on this other one. But all our other stuff is fabulous and, you know, you need it."

"It's big industry, and people are prejudiced against large industries like the oil industry," says Mel Harkrader Pine, a veteran public-relations expert in Purcell-ville, Va., who has represented both Mobil and the treated-wood industry when they were under attack.

Part of the problem is that drug companies are a victim of their own success, he says. "We went through this in the '70s and early '80s [in the oil industry] until business went down the tubes," Mr. Pine says. "People liked us better when we weren't making as much money."

But critics say it's practices not profits that has gotten Big Pharma into trouble.

"[C]ontrary to its public relations, this is not a very innovative industry," writes Marcia Angell, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and author of "The Truth About the Drug Companies," in an e-mail. "[T]he notion that the pharmaceutical companies discover lifesaving drugs is largely myth. Of the 487 drugs they brought to market in the past six years, 78 percent were classified by the FDA as not likely to represent improvements over drugs already on the market, and 68 percent didn't even contain new chemical compounds (just old drugs in new combinations or formulations)."

The current patch of criticism that has come upon PhRMA is "deserved," adds Dr. Jerome Kassirer, another former editor in chief of NEJM and author of "On The Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health." "[T]hey exaggerate the amount of money that's used to produce new products. They are producing too many drugs that don't have any special added value, a bunch of 'me too' drugs."

"Obviously, it's hard for someone to understand what's wrong with going across the border into Canada and getting a needed drug for a lower price," says PR guru Pine. He says Big Pharma would benefit from the same advice he gives all his clients: "Be authentic and sympathetic."

• "The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It," by Dr. Marcia Angell.

• "On The Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health," by Dr. Jerome Kassirer.

• "Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs," by Dr. Jerry Avorn.

• "Overdo$ed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine," by Dr. John Abramson.

• "Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business - and Bad Medicine," by investigative reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele.

• "The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs," by Merrill Goozner.

Page: 1 | 2