Reviews

Selling drugs -- with a little help from a journalist

How exactly are journalists recruited to work on behalf of corporate clients? An advertisement placed earlier this year by public relations firm Chandler Chicco Agency offers an insight.

In August, CCA was seeking to hire a freelance journalist to attend a diabetes conference. Brynn Thomas from the New York office of CCA, a specialist in public relations for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, arranged for a small ad to be distributed to a jobs email list of US science writers. "Healthcare public relations agency is seeking a freelance journalist to attend the EASD (European Association for the Study of Diabetes) meeting in Glasgow, September 9-13, 2001," the ad read. "Responsibilities include covering industry-sponsored symposia and scientific sessions. Journalist must be able to guarantee 2-4 placements in medical trade publications targeting general practitioners and/or diabetes specialists." For those tempted, the ad indicated that all travel and out of pocket expenses would be covered. The freelancer had to provide details of their "availability, fee, and trade media contacts."

CCA is a rising star in the public relations industry. The five year old firm, which has its headquarters in New York, has a staff of 85, including 20 in London. The firm's claim to fame is handling the launch of Viagra for Pfizer.

Selling antidiabetic drugs is a big business that is going to get bigger. The World Health Organization believes the number of people affected by the disease could grow from the current estimate of 135 million to more than 300 million by 2025. One pharmaceutical industry analysis company estimates that antidiabetic drugs could grow from the current $US810m each year to $US2bn over the next five years alone.

Those in the business of promoting drugsor more genteelly described as "pharmaceutical marketing" by its practitionersknow that one of the biggest factors in determining the financial fate of a drug is the quality of media coverage in specialist medical journals.

A guide on "medical education" published earlier this year by the British trade magazine Pharmaceutical Marketing leaves drug promoters in no doubt what they should aim for (BMJ 2001;322:1312). "The best marketing, and the cheapest, is editorial," the guide said. Readers believed claims made in editorial sections far more than claims made in an advert, "the most expensive way into a publication," the guide added.

CCA founder Bob Chandler said that CCA hired freelance journalists "because of their scientific expertise, and we find their insights very valuable. The issue here is the language used in the ad . . . It's an unfortunate mistake and we take every responsibility for the implications made in the ad. For the record, we do not control what journalists write. We would expect the freelance journalist, and the publications for which they write, to publish only what they see as legitimate news."

Boyce Rensberger, the director of the Knight Science Fellow programme at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "The presence of a payoff creates an explicit conflict of interest. Readers who trust a publication to be independent are being deceived if the payment is not disclosed. How would you regard an article that claimed, say, dramatic effectiveness of an experimental diabetes drug if, at the bottom of the article, you read this line: `The writer was paid to write this article by the drug manufacturer'?"

Rob Burton, freelance journalist, Canberra, Australia Bob Burton, freelance journalist. 

Canberra, Australia