Side Effects (The Movie)
I mean there is something so fundamentally unethical about tying profit into educating doctors and helping patients.
No doubt that phrase, spoken by the lead character in Side Effects from writer/director Kathleen Slattery-Moschaku, was included in the trailer because it sums up the film’s main theme in a nutshell. Of course, I take the diametrically opposed view. There is absolutely nothing unethical about mixing profits with physician education and patient care. In fact, it’s essential if we wish these noble pursuits to be of enviable quality and continuously available on demand. There is simply no mechanism other than profit motive that is known to drive and to sustain innovation and quality performance.
Kathleen Slattery-Moschaku was a pharma sales rep for 10 years. That’s a long time to be in a sales job of any type but especially long for a pharma rep, who must endure the same performance metrics of other sales jobs in the face of ever-increasing pressures that severely limit quality face-time with their customers. The job becomes even tougher when the sales rep is a non-specialist with no formal medical or science training, as was the case for this auteur. Time pressure is nothing compared with the pressure of knowing that your customers have the upper hand in nearly every technical discussion about your products. It’s easy to see why non-specialist reps burn out quickly. Those who last ten years, like Ms. Slattery-Moschaku, have developed defense mechanisms to help them cope with these stresses. Apparently, if the trailer is representative of the film, Ms. Slattery-Moschaku’s chief defense mechanism was unusual candor regarding her products’ “real” effects, which in turn brought her unusual sales success. No surprise there. If docs think they’re getting the unfiltered truth, they’ll trust it and the rep it came from. It doesn’t matter if the truth suggests a flawed product; doctors know that all drugs have flaws. When faced with a choice between two or more flawed products, they will be more likely to choose the one in which the flaws were made known to them from the outset, the less sugar-coating the better.
What doesn’t necessarily come across in the trailer for the film is an admission from Ms. Slattery-Moschaku that the position of the non-specialist rep within the universe of the pharma industry is an isolated one, despite its place on the front lines, as it were. They are the industry’s ambassadors, asked to show a good face and remain loyal and optimistic but not expected to participate in the long, painful processes leading to the pharmacy shelves. Inevitably, relegation to such a role leads to a one-sided, cynical view of the industry. Only the marketing angle is seen; greed appears to be the motive for all actions. Doctors appear to be little more than dupes, buffoons swayed to participate in the deceit by little more than a well-timed laugh and a fancy lunch. Industry executives become uncaring suits whose only goal is to keep their stock options above water. The researchers who actually discover and develop the drugs are seen as profoundly naive, unaware that they are simply being used to power the corporate engines.
It’s not a surprising world view. The industry must accept blame for creating and fostering it and should change its methods to finally stop it from proliferating. Ms. Slattery-Moschaku, for her part, should admit that what drives her view is cynicism, born of a difficult, one-sided experience within industry, and not from a duty to disclose “the truth” for the good of society. The truth, it turns out, is far more complex than the industry’s critics would lead the general public to believe.
