Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Today's Lesson In Alternate Reality History

What Makes a Good Pharma CEO?:

What strikes me is the oddness of having lawyers in the top slot; the legal department isn't such a big customary route to the top job. But the environment has changed greatly. Fifty years ago, with the FDA pressing ever harder on efficacy, the most important thing in a pharma chief was probably knowing what went into making an effective drug. Twenty years ago, you needed to know how to market it to get the most money out of a very narrow patent window. These days, you need to be able to negotiate a fearsome political and regulatory environment.
Instead of responding directly to this gibberish, I'd like to quote something from the wiki for the Advisory Board Company;
The company was founded in 1979 as the Research Council of Washington by David G. Bradley. In 1997, the Corporate Executive Board was spun off from the Advisory Board Company[1], and the Advisory Board Company focused its business exclusively on the healthcare industry. In serving the healthcare industry, the Advisory Board Company primarily serves hospitals and health systems, but also offers niche programs to pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers. In 2006, the Advisory Board Company employed more than 900 staff members, the majority of whom are located in the Washington, D.C. headquarters.
Now, naturally this is completely irrelevant to anything Megan has ever said or written, completely and utterly and totally, but it's still good to know in just, y'know, an abstract way.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I get it. Atlantic/Advisory Board. No, she would never do that.

Matt P said...

What strikes me is the oddness of having lawyers in the top slot

I'm sure even Megan would agree that Merck & Co. is a pretty major pharm company, yeah? Their president and CEO in 1959 was John T. Connor; according to his NYTimes obituary, he was trained as a lawyer and went on to become Johnson's Commerce Secretary.

So, yeah.

So sue me said...

"...fearsome political and regulatory environment?" - oh my...send these poor fellows more money to ease their woes, willya? Otherwise they might stop doing what they're doing.

The West has been taken over by the over-educated, incompetent, children of the rich. Even the latest Economist magazine can't actually defend it.