Pharma’s Cutting Edge

I always look forward to getting Wired in the mail each month.  It’s one of my few guilty pleasures–a magazine ostensibly devoted to technology and science that is actually a slightly more sophisticated version of Stuff.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that…Freddy likes his gadgets.

So you can imagine how disappointing it was for me to open the plastic sheath protecting October’s Wired (not yet linked online) to find a pic of a big mouth about to pop a tablet below the caption:  “The Thin Pill: How Big Pharma turned fat into a disease–and then invented a drug to cure it.”  I deflated like a stuck party balloon.

Prepared for the worst sort of pharma bashing, I opened up to the article and read carefully.  Turns out the story, by Wired’s Deputy Editor Thomas Goetz, is actually a mostly balanced discussion of the evolution and debate surrounding the metabolic syndrome, not sensationalistic at all. 

Well, Goetz does take his hyperbolic shots at pharma:  “Drug firms owe their prodigious success to doing one thing exceptionally well. R&D? No–marketing.”  But for the most part, Goetz restrains his anti-industry rhetoric and provides a reasonably complete and, again, balanced view of the scientific, regulatory and commercial issues surrounding obesity and the medical community’s efforts to treat it.

So, what’s up with that cover title or its internal cousin: “75 million Americans have something called metabolic syndrome.  How Big Pharma turned obesity into a disease–then invented drugs to cure it.”? 

Goetz’ article doesn’t discuss how “Big Pharma” medicalized obesity.  He does point out that it’s in Pharma’s interests to have obesity recognized as a serious health problem by regulators and third-party payers.  But, if anything, Goetz accurately describes the vigorous scientific debate surrounding metabolic syndrome and the medicalization of obesity, and appears to conclude by a preponderance of opinion presented, that obesity really IS a serious medical problem in dire need of treatment with…DRUGS. 

The article also doesn’t provide any claims by Pharma or any else that the industry has invented or is on the verge of inventing drugs to cure obesity.  Rather, in a small sidebar and a brief backgrounder on rimonabant (Acomplia, Sanofi-Aventis), Goetz illustrates the challenges faced by industry as it tries to discover and develop safe and effective drug treatments for obesity and its many serious sequelae.

Let’s summarize.  Wired’s cover indicates that it holds within an expose, revealing that Pharma has essentially invented a medical condition and, since it has itself invented the disease, was able to cure it and reap vast rewards.  What Wired’s story actually contains, however, is a mostly balanced depiction of the medical community’s scientific debate over the metabolic syndrome and, more generally, obesity and its complications.  It also mentions that recognition of obesity as a serious medical condition (or disease) with serious health and economic consequences will benefit Pharma as it tries to develop new drugs to combat it.

Am I crazy, or is Wired using the current Pharma-bashing craze as a way to move product off its shelves?  If I’m sane (and the eery voices in my head assure me that I’m just fine) Big Pharma has become Anna Nicole-Smith, it’s become Michael Jackson, it’s, gulp, Paris Hilton!  Big pharma’s reputation is apparently so sullied among the general populace that newsstand magazines feel comfortable exploiting it the way some supermarket checkout rags exploit pics of clouds that look like demons or an anorectic starlet’s beach jog.

Let’s face it, Pharma works for Dr. Evil in the public’s eyes.  If Pharma wants to re-capture its once decent public rep, it will not be enough for it to break with Evil.  No, denouncing Evil won’t be nearly enough.  Pharma must destroy it.