Another spin on pharma "spin doctors"

The litany of woes the pharmaceutical industry has been going through are seeming endless. While the lawyers won't let their company CME specialists speak to the press--even Medical Meetings, which is not out to do a hatchet job on them like the general press seems to be these days--they are sending some company reps on the road to speak to med students, staff physicians, pharmacists, and patients, according to this most interestingly titled Forbes article, Spin Doctors.

GSK, maker of Paxil, the antidepressant, and Flonase, an antiallergy steroid, wants to appear open and accessible at a time when drug companies are on the defensive. "We thought it was time we did a better job of telling our story," says Christopher Viehbacher, president of GSK's U.S. pharmaceuticals division based in Philadelphia and Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Why they won't let some of their very bright stars in the CME world speak to their commitment to improving the CME enterprise is beyond me. If they really want to "do a better job of telling their story," they have to take the gags off these folks and let them reach a wider audience than they can at a CME provider meeting, where they have been speaking relatively freely, such as at the SACME fall meeting session I posted about earlier.

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