'Round the Sphere: PDUFA, DTC and Pet Turtles Too!

The Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act (S.1082) has been approved by Congress (see "Congress Expands FDA's Oversight On Drug Safety") and will soon be signed into law (you can read the entire bill here).

While Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot makes a big deal out the intense lobbying by advertising agencies and broadcasters to make sure the bill had no restrictions on DTC (see "Why Tougher DTC Restrictions Were Killed"), he overlooked the murky-water lobbyists who worked hard to ensure there were also no restrictions on the marketing and sales of pet turtles.

I refer, of course, to Title VII of the bill, which states that the FDA is prohibited from restricting the sale of turtles less than 10.2 centimeters in diameter.

The pet turtle industry feared a "turtle moratorium," however the Pet Turtle Advertising Council of America (PTACA) lobbied hard and long to have Title VII inserted into the bill. It would have been unseemly for turtle farmers, wholesalers, or other commercial retail sellers of pet turtles to do so directly.

For more on that, see "DTC Here to Stay; Pet Turtles Too!" over at Pharma Marketing Blog.

The WSJ Health Blog also covered this story (about the DTC advertisers' lobby, not the pet turtle lobby) -- see "Advertising Allies Turn Tide for Pharma."

PhRMA -- the US drug industry trade association -- was ecstatic about the bill's provision regarding the preview of broadcast TV ads, but was mysteriously silent about the turtles:

"...the legislation will enable FDA to hire additional employees to review broadcast drug advertisements prior to public dissemination, helping to ensure that benefits and risks are clearly and accurately communicated. It also will create strong incentives for companies to submit such advertisements to the agency before airing them, in accordance with PhRMA's Guiding Principles on Direct-to-Consumer Advertisements about Prescription Drugs." (See "PhRMA Statement on Congressional Passage of PDUFA".)

NRx, of course, had more pressing news to report: ie, "Getting high on a can of Coke."

Hundreds of people every year are poisoned by pet turtles and we're talking about getting high from Coke?!!! Something's not right.

Finally, Mark Senak over at Eye On FDA, began his post ominously:

"As we all wait anxiously for Congress to do its job and actually produce legislation for signature, and as many FDA employees see their jobs hanging in the balance while awaiting PDUFA IV, some may wonder what it is all about and what is at stake."

Clearly, Mark is more worried about those poor FDA employees -- whom I calculate will be paid $231,481.48 per year to preview TV DTC ads (see my math here) -- than about those pet turtle owners who might have been denied licking the backs of their reptiles to get high!

'Round the Sphere: Bloggers Side with SiCKO (to a point and for now); Tongue-in-Cheek Free Lunch

Michael Moore's long-awaited documentary film SiCKO (why the lowercase "i"?), about the pharmaceutical-health-insurance-industry complex, is set to debut in Cannes this Saturday.

I wish I could be there, but I am temporarily without passport! So, I wrote an open letter to Moore and urged him to invite us bloggers to a special screening in NYC. If Centocor can do it with its film Moore should be able to as well! (See "Mr. Moore Don't Ignore: Please Invite Me to a Screening of Your Movie").

While I continue to advance the interests of pharma bloggers, other bloggers have pitched in with their own commentary on this film and Michael Moore.

Mark Senak, who confesses not to have seen any of Mike's films, nevertheless has some good advice on putting this movie into perspective:

"I would like to think that SiCKO is perhaps an opportunity for industry and for industry critics to do some soul-searching, asking the real tough questions about how people got to feeling the way they do about the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, and what can be done about it. But for people on each side of the issue to spend time this summer calling the movie or its maker names isn't likely to advance anyone's image - industry or its critics." (See "The Summer of SiCKO - Cannes Film Festival Begins Today.")

This comment got a hearty "hear, hear" comment. Mark, if Moore takes my challenge and invites me to a special screening of SiCKO, I'll be sure to put in a good word for you as well.

Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot expressed a similar point of view:

"Getting beat up in a widely publicized movie isn't likely to make execs and their employees feel warm and fuzzy. Few people respond well to harsh criticism. So ignoring or chastising Moore and his film is likely to be a typical reaction. But that won't make the issues disappear. If anything, big pharma will only appear more defensive, and confirm impressions that critics say is all too real." (See "SiCKO Debuts At Cannes On Saturday").

Ed got some decidedly nasty comments, including this one, which brought the Holocaust into play:

"Occam's Beard says:

Sorry, don't mean to become a gadfly here, but I can't let this pass either without examining the logic.

Or has industry made it easy for him - and other critics - to pull out the long knives? This requires a gamut of people ...to look in the mirror and ask why their industry is increasingly villified.

So unpopularity necessarily has a just basis that the unpopular would do well to reflect on and change their ways?

Perhaps that should be pointed out to German Jews, if you can find any. Demonizing the unpopular is child's play."

I am not sure this qualifies as a direct comparison of Moore's anticipated treatment of Pharma to German Nazi's' demonizing of jews, but there you have it! Occam must not be a proponent of the First Amendment!

Other bloggers in the Pharma Blogosphere^TM posted reports about SiCKO, but had nothing new to add.

Meanwhile, the brouhaha over the Cupcake Caper (see "'Round the Sphere With Christiane Truelove") has morphed to a brouhaha about pharma free lunches to physicians and patients in general.

When Black Kitty first raised the issue of appropriate food to give to patients -- cupcakes didn't seem to meet BK's criteria of appropriate -- I thought this was worthy to follow up with some general guidelines of pharma's nascent free lunch for patients program (see "Guidelines for Gifts to Patients"). I had written on free lunch for patients before (see "Free lunch for patients! Why not?") and thought this was an appropriate topic to add on to.

But that story is history.

Pharma's Free Lunch for Physicians Program
What really hit a nerve is when I revisited pharma's practice of free lunch for PHYSICIANS and reported that 62% of respondents to a poll agreed that this practice should ceaase (see "Blog Readers' Opinions on Physician Marketing & Education Practices").

Sarah Palmer, Cafe Pharma webmaster, reminded me that such a poll is not statistically significant. I'm not questioning that -- Sarah and I are on good speaking terms now and I don't wish to reopen old issues. But I will say that in this new age of Web 2.0 and "The Wisdom of Crowds," online polls, rating score and opinions from readers, regardless of the statistical significance, will have an increasing impact on the pharmaceutical industry.

Some industry experts, like Bob Ehrlich, Chairman of DTC Perspectives, have even suggested that Blogs may some day rival DTC (direct to consumer) advertising in influencing consumers (see "Blogs vs. DTC: What's Best for Consumers?").

I think that's what he said. But you don't have to be satisfied with my interpretation. Mr. Ehrlich will be my guest on an upcoming Pharma Marketing Talk podcast on Thursday, May 24, 2007, 1 PM Eastern US time. You can access this podcast here.

Regarding my post about the poll that called for an end to pharma free lunch to physicians, I received a comment from an anonymous physician who said:

"I would just like to say that as a former intern and resident working 100-hour weeks while making less than $30K a year, a free lunch now and then was a godsend and brightened up otherwise long and dreary days."

"Seriously, though, I do understand why institutions are moving toward these 'No Free Lunch' things, but really, cut the scut workers a break every now and then. If you've been there, you know how it sucked and how a free lunch was like having recess."

Of course, I took him/her at his/her word and went on to post a little spoof about free lunch being more than just lunch (see "When is a Free Lunch More Than Just Lunch?").

The guy took all this too seriously: "Like I've said, I don't deny that there are issues, but in the world of pharma and medicine, this is such piddling nothing, I have a hard time understanding your obsession with it."

Chill out, dude. You need a Valium, not pizza! You are so full of yourself that YOU cannot recognize when someone else makes comments "with considerable tongue-in-cheek"!

But, you have to wonder, if free lunch was such a "piddling nothing," why does the drug industry spend so much on its "free lunch for physician" program (which I once estimated cost about $1.65 billion per year; see "Free Lunch Redux") and why do physicians like this get so worked up about criticism of the program? It obviously means a lot to them -- like a free entitlement that they will fight tooth and nail to maintain!

Of course, it's not just lunch; it's the golden key that gets reps in the physician's door (see chart above), which is closing to more and more drug reps. The industry itself recognizes it has only itself to blame -- Pfizer, for example, recently cut back the practice of "rep pods" by which a number of reps hit the same doctor with the same message until the doc caves in!

That's it for now. Go forth and explore the sphere!

Stats: I'll Show You Mine; Will You Show Me Yours?

The mission of Pharma Blogosphere^TM, believe it or not, is to promote the rising luminaries of our little sphere of influence. By writing about and linking to blogs in this sphere, I believe I have helped bring attention to our little world and increase the number of readers for each and every one of us.

I think I have some evidence to back that statement. The evidence resides in site statistics; namely number of visitors and page views.

This is a very touchy subject because often metrics are a closely-held asset, especially that "etc." stuff (IP addresses of site visitors, referring pages, etc.). As far as personally-identifiable metrics like IP addresses, a few bloggers -- notably Peter Rost -- are open about their privacy policies. Others, myself included, have not gotten around to making those policies public. It's not that we are hiding anything, we've just been lazy or, more likely, blogging is so new that we've never thought about some of these things. A few of us don't even collect the sort of information for which policies are necessary. So don't take this as a personal condemnation. Just a wake up call.

But I really want to talk about de-identified or aggregate visitor data, specifically number of visitors and page views.

Bloggers use a number of different applications to measure these metrics, which means there is no clear standard and it is not possible to compare one blog's metrics with another's; no statistically accurate way, that is. So, anything I say here is not meant to accurately compare one blog with another (despite the provocative title of this post, which was meant to grab your attention more than to challenge you).

Rather, I'd like to reveal some metrics in the realm of pharma blogging to see how we compare to other blogging topic areas, or to measure our progress over time. I have had a few people ask me if the numbers they are getting are average for a blog in this sphere or maybe above or below average. Of course, I have no way of knowing, but by revealing what I know about my blog (Pharma Marketing Blog) and what's public from other blogs in this sphere, I hope newbies can better measure their progress and popularity.

I will look at the metrics of three different blogs in the Pharma Blogosphere: Pharma Marketing Blog, The Health Care Blog (THCB) and Eye On FDA.

Visitors
Mark Senak at Eye On FDA uses a service called eXTReMe Tracking. From what I can see by clicking on the stats logo on the blog, Eye On FDA averages 3,228 unique visitors per month, or 5,412 visitors in April, which compares to THCB's 30,000 and Pharma Marketing Blog's 18,000 unique visits per month.

The latter two blogs use Site Meter, which defines a "visit" as a series of page views by one person with no more than 30 minutes in between page views. I am not sure how eXTReMe defines unique visitor and how this relates to Site Meter's unique visits.

Page Views
Last month (April 2007), THCB logged approximately 52,000 page views, whereas Pharma Marketing Blog logged about 31,000 page views. I can't figure out how to get Eye on FDA page view data from the publicly available stats link provided.

I have always compared my stats to THCB's stats because this is a great blog in a field much larger than pharmaceutical marketing, which is what I focus on. Last year, I was happy that Pharma Marketing Blog registered one-third (33%) the number of visitors that THCB was getting at the time. Today, that figure is closer to 60%!

I attribute this to the phenomenon of "a rising tide floats all ships" -- that is, as the number of bloggers in the Pharma Blogosphere sea has increased, and as we link to one another and get tracked by other sites like Cafe Pharma and PharmaCentral PageFlakes, that sea level will continue to rise and float all of us even higher! At least I hope so.

Stats For Pharma Marketing Blog
Let's get back to the evidence. The following chart was captured directly from the Site Meter stats page for Pharma Marketing Blog. It shows visits (yellow) and page views (red) per month for the last 12 months. The arrow indicates when I started the Pharma Blogosphere blog. Looks like the rising tide floated my boat! Did it float yours too?

# of Posts
But rising visitor stats is not just due to the fact that more attention is being paid these days to pharma bloggers. I have also made more posts per month than I did last year as the following chart shows.


I now average about 21 posts per month, which is more than many other pharma blogs but much less than others, especially Pharmalot, PharmaGossip, etc. However, my postings tend to be lengthier and more in-depth than others -- I average about 800 words per post! At that rate, I estimate that I am writing over 200,000 words per year or over 300 pages! That's a book!

# of Comments
One of the distinguishing feature of blogging is the comments that people can make and thereby participate in the discussion. That discussion is very important to me. I learn from other people's comments and that helps me create a more useful blog and newsletter for my subscribers.

Between January and April of this year, I have received approximately 3,200 comments. That's about 2-3 comments per post! Perhaps not a lot by general blog standards, but pretty good for this small sphere of influence.

OK, I've showed you my stats and I used a verifiable 3rd-party chart or data that anyone can collect from my blog. So, no smoke and mirrors. I'd be interested in learning how other blogs in this space are doing stat-wise.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Who Loves Ya Baby? The TOP 5 Blogs According to Industry Readers

As many readers of the Pharma Blogosphere^TM blog know, back in February we hosted the First Ever Pharma Blogosphere reader survey. A sampling of results of this survey have already been published on this blog (see "Industry Bias in the Pharma Blogosphere" and "Pharma Blogosphere Survey Results - Who and Why?").

The full results of the survey will be published in the April, 2007 issue of Pharma Marketing News and presented at the Spring 2007 Healthcare Blogging Summit 2007 being held in Las Vegas on April 29. (I better get my ass in gear to get ready for that!).

In this installment I present some data showing the top 5 pharma blogs ranked by survey respondents who said they were employed at pharmaceutical companies. Recall that blogs were ranked according to Readability (layout, ease of reading and finding information), Usefulness (for keeping readers aware of the issues), and Credibility (accuracy of information). The results are shown in the following slide.

Note: N=43 industry readers; shows top five blogs in each category; only blogs with more than 5 respondent ratings were considered.

Some Take-aways
Only three blogs -- In the Pipeline, EyeOnFDA, and Pharma Marketing Blog -- made the "Industry Top 5" in each category. Props to In the Pipeline for being #1 in Usefulness and Credibility, and #2 in Readability!

Surprisingly, Drug Wonks was considered the most readable, but did not make the Top 5 in either of the other 2 categories. I reveal more about that in the upcoming Pharma Marketing News article.

Sorry, Peter, Question Authority -- popular as it might be among all readers -- did not make the "Industry Top 5" in any category! But I will say this: Industry readers thought that Question Authority was more supportive of the industry than did non-industry readers! In fact, it was second on that list (behind Pharma Marketing Blog) of blogs that the industry thought supportive. Perhaps if the survey was done over again today, industry respondents would have a different opinion! Perhaps more closely aligned with a view expressed on CafePharma; namely, "This Rost guy is a Michael Moore crony that is an industry and medical community outcast that has nothing better to do then sit at his computer all day long blogging about things he knows little about, blowing things out of proportion, and surfing porn."

Caveats
Kind in mind that this survey covered only 22 blogs. Today the field is much bigger! Also, several blogs were very new when the survey was run and, consequently, may not have had enough history to be properly judged.

There will be another Pharma Blogosphere Reader survey in the Fall. Stay tuned!

'Round the Sphere: Rost Retires, Edwards Wages holy War, Byrd Flies, and Other Tidbits

It's been an interesting week in The Pharma Blogosphere!

I Won't Have Rost to Kick Around Anymore
First, Peter Rost (Question Authority) retires his blog in order to focus on his new movie (see "Rost Hit By PhRMA's PPA Bus: Shuts Down Blog"). He's dead to me now and I have removed the Question Authority blog from The Pharma Blogosphere list.

Holy Cow, Holy War!
Jim Edwards is getting me really mad! First, he claims I am pro-cancer. Now he says I am anti-science! Dude, I have an MS and MPhil degree from Columbia University in Biochemistry and majored in Chemistry at Franklin and Marshall College (phi Beta Kappa) and am a member of the New York Academy of Sciences! But Edwards seems to think I am just another hick from Pennsylvania, a God-fearing, bible-totting border state! Like I said, meet me at Christ Church at dawn (see "Holy War in Pharma Blogosphere Over Gardasil!")

Parents Don't Know Shit!
Meanwhile, Drug Wonks has a guest blogger (TV personality JOHN STOSSEL) who blames the media (how original for Drug Wonks and how "biting the hand that feeds him" for Stossel) for scaring parents about vaccinations (see "Scaring Ourselves Stupid"). Another attempt to paint opposition to MANDATORY vaccination as "anti-science." And however much Stossel's "heart goes out to parents struggling to help their autistic children," his brain is gone out to lunch. And I thought the conservatives believed that parents' rights rule!

Byrd in a Cage?
Has eDrugSearch Blog and Web site been shut down, hijacked, or subverted? See "eDrug Search Hijacked by Sleazy Link Farm".

I don't know about you, but I am getting concerned about recent troubles experienced by "insiders," "whistle blowers," and "anti-establishment" proponents in The Pharma Blogosphere. Are we all vulnerable?

What Else Is Going On?
Blogosphere Survey: The First Ever Pharma Blogger Survey has ended! There were a gross of responses -- 144, that is. From wikipedia I learned that 144 is the twelfth Fibonacci number, and the largest one to also be a square, as the square of 12. I also learned that 144 is the measurement, in cubits, of the wall of New Jerusalem shown by the seventh angel (Holy Bible, Revelation 21:17). Holy War Batman!

So when do I reveal the results? I may reveal a few results here from time to time as teasers, but I will make a full report available at the upcoming "Healthcare Blogging Summit 2007 (Spring)" in Las Vegas, where I will be participating in the panel "Navigating the Blogosphere."

CL Psych Blog: CL Psych Blog was rated as one of the TOP FIVE blogs in The Pharma Blogosphere in terms of readability, credibility, and usefulness. Not the highest in rank in any of those categories mind you, but right up there! Consequently, I have made it a point to check it out often.

This week CL Pysch liked what I had to say about Cymbalta, off-label promotion, and disease mongering (see "Cymbalta for GAD: Pimp That Thang"). To find out why CL Psych is talking about "Pimp[ing] That Thang," you'll have to read my original post ("eGAD! How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cymbalta!").

[SHOULDN'T I BE DOING SOME REAL WORK?]

OnThePharm: Still on vacation! More than a week ago, OnThePharm announced it was back from a week's vacation. Doesn't seem to make a difference -- no posts were made since then!

Eye On FDA: Mark Senak over at Eye On FDA weighed in on Gardasil and mandatory vaccinations in the post "State Status on HPV Mandates." Mark, who will be my podcast guest next Tuesday (see "Keeping an Eye on the FDA"), points out that some states are considering legislation to BAN mandatory vaccination (now THAT's anti-science!). He also belittled Washington state's proposal to include $25,000 for an awareness campaign on the subject of HPV. He thinks this is "measly." Au contraire, mon ami! Look what Merck got for $6,000! A great worldwide PR campaign that the majority of people responding to my poll think will BENEFIT Gardasil sales! (See "Does Merck Need a Vaccine for Bad PR?")

Pharma Giles: Pharma Giles examines Pharma CEO lookalikes (see "Lookalikes..."). He insults me, however, when he characterizes The Simpsons as a "children's television cartoon." Obviously, this Brit or Aussie blogger (I forget which) is not too familiar with US culture. Although that might be a plus in his favor, he really ought to get with it. As I keep telling my wife, The Simpsons is the longest running TV show in American history and I doubt if many kids watch it or can even understand its humor and political commentary! BTW, "Montgomerie (sic)" Burns is NOT the boss of a "nuclear reprocessing plant" -- it's a nuclear POWER plant! Jeez!

OK, that's it. I really got to do some work!