Given the vital role of medical products companies and the magnitude of their challenges, one might imagine that this industry would be admired. To some extent, it is. Leading research organizations such as the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease proactively build bridges with industry leaders, solicit advice from industry scientists, and fund projects in industry labs.
But this enlightened view of industry is not widespread. This is largely because of the disproportionate influence of a coterie of prominent critics we have previously dubbed “pharmascolds,” who routinely vilify the medical products industry and portray academics working with it as traitors and sellouts. These critics are pious academics, self-righteous medical journal editors, and opportunistic politicians and journalists. Their condemnation of anyone’s legitimate profit — it’s all “corruption” in their book — has in fact materially enhanced their own careers. They extrapolate from occasional behavioral lapses in industry — which is equally, if not more prevalent, in universities — to demonize the market and portray scientific medicine as an ascetic religion, which it is not.
Unfortunately, the industry that has saved millions of lives and saved trillions of dollars (avoiding surgical interventions and hospital costs) has been very reticent about promoting their achievements. Like any industry, we’ve made mistakes, but overall I think we could all agree that we live better, more healthy, pain free lives because of the progress made in pharmaceutical milestones.
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