NOT-SO-PUBLIC RELATIONS

December 16, 2003

The standard treatment for sepsis, an infection of the blood, costs

$50 per day, but Eli Lilly has a new drug out called Xigris, which

may not be any better than older treatments but costs $6,800 per

treatment.

That's not exactly an easy sell, but Lilly has hired a

PR firm to launch a campaign called " The Ethics, the Urgency and

the Potential, " whose premise is that it is " unethical not to use

the drug. "

" To reinforce the point, " writes Carl Elliott, " Lilly has funded a

$1.8 million project called the 'Values, Ethics &

Rationing in Critical Care Task Force,' in which bioethicists and

physicians from various American medical schools will examine the

ethics of rationing certain drugs and services.

It is a brilliant strategy. There is no better way to enlist bioethicists in

the

cause of consumer capitalism than to convince them they are working

for social justice. ... It's no mystery, then, why pharmaceutical

companies want to brand themselves with bioethics.

But do bioethicists really want to brand themselves with Pharma? To take

only one example: The pharmaceutical sponsors of the University of

Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and its faculty's projects are

now facing multimillion dollar fraud sanctions (AstraZeneca), a

Nigerian lawsuit for research abuse (Pfizer), massive class-action

payouts (Wyeth-Ayerst), a criminal probe into obstruction of

justice (Schering Plough), an ongoing fraud lawsuit (Merck and

Medco), and allegations of suppressing research data on suicide in

children (GlaxoSmithKline). "

SOURCE: Slate, December 15, 2003

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