Big Pharma / SCANDAL

1 - Denial
Side-effects and unforeseen deaths are part of the deal when you’re pushing drugs. It’s when the media and the activists start snooping around that the problems start.
Fightback strategies
• Deny everything.
• Take the high road. Accuse the media of sensationalism.
• Attack the accuracy of their reporting.

2 - Shutdown
As evidence mounts that problems are serious, politicians get in on the act, mouthing off to the media and threatening to call in the regulators.
Fightback strategies
• Boycott the media and starve the rat pack.
• Claim there’s a conspiracy – rival companies, lefty journos and other vested interests are out to get you.

3 - Extricate
What a pain! Here come the regulators, poking and prying.
Fightback strategy
• Call in the high-priced lawyers to search for an escape route.

4 - Purge
Things are getting a bit too hot – there are stiffs all around and the threat of ‘incontrovertible evidence’ looms. The regulators are recalling the drug.
Fightback strategies
• Find a fall guy – preferably some
old fogey in R&D who oversees
trials and tests and is about to retire anyway.
• Pay them to take the rap and then say it was all their fault.

5 - Compensate
With the fall guy behind bars, the company escapes unscathed and it’s back to business as usual. Except for those pesky victims’ families and their lawsuits.
Fightback strategy
• Settle – offer big bucks as compensation, but only if they agree there was no malpractice.

Now everything’s running smoothly again, put it down to experience and move on – there’s money to be made.

Based on a scenario in Jeffrey Robinson’s
Prescription Games (Simon & Schuster 2001).