'Round the Sphere: The Pink Cupcake Caper, Dollars for Docs, BIO Queen Noir, and Other Insults

Peter Rost keeps milking that AZ newsletter, bringing to the fore two new issues for us Pharma Blogosphere^TM denizens to mash up.

First up is the "Pink Cupcake Caper," which led to some comments published by Christiane Truelove, which raised fur on Black Kitty (BK), which sounded like a "Kitty Fight" to me, who lost more face over the resulting brouhaha.

Lesson: No one should speak for patients as to what is or is not appropriate gifts. It also raises the question that I posed over at Pharma Marketing Blog: should the drug industry develop guidelines for gifts to patients similar to guidelines for gifts to physicians? (see "Guidelines for Gifts to Patients").

However, I was glad to raise the issue of sexism amongst a few of us male bloggers in this arena, which I hope the women focus on rather than my provocative "Kitty Fight" blog post, which is a red herring.

BTW, have you voted in the "most sexist male blogger" poll yet? Voter turnout is light so far, but I see that Peter Rost leads with 27% of the votes, Jack Friday follows with 18%, and I trail with 9%. Of course, a plurality (45%) think we should grow up already! See the poll in the sidebar on the right.

Doctor Bags of Money
Peter, of course, brought us the "Buckets of Money" that sales reps can dip their hands into when calling on doctors. But did you know that many docs reap "Bags of Money" as paid drug industry consultants?

Peter exposes one such doctor that may have been paid as much as $204,000 in 2006 by Astrazeneca (see the Dr. Freedland Fee Fest post by Peter here).

My take on this: Hey! Pharma! Are you going to report these fees now that you are beginning to be more transparent about educational grants? Should these fees be reported? Let me know what you think by taking the poll here.

Queen Noir
Oh well, if sexism doesn't get your blood roiling, how about a Jordanian queen barring the press from her BIO keynote speech. This angered -- and rightly so -- Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot who wondered if BIO was taking place in the Middle East or America (see "BIO: Is This Boston, Or The Mideast?").

It is a BIO PR faux pas -- Americans are dying every day supposedly to make the Middle East more democratic, while our freedoms are being whittled away here at home. I say bullshit to that and throw the Queen Noir out-a-here! (as in the great NYC sense of the term "Throw da bum out!").

P.S. Now that the French have elected a conservative leader, I feel it is now politically correct to pepper my post with French phrases.