Dive Brief:
- Industry lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) President Steve Ubl described a newly launched ad campaign as "less hoodie, more lab coats," referring to industry badboy Martin Shkreli.
- PhRMA launched the campaign this week in order to combat the industry’s bad image regarding drug pricing hikes.
- Shkreli was quick to bite back against the industry, launching his own website that "revealed" the rest of pharma’s bad behavior.
Dive Insight:
Shkreli, known for hiking the price of AIDS drug Daraprim while at the helm of Turing Pharmaceuticals, has long been an industry scapegoat.
The exec’s bizarre behavior and Twitter trolling hasn’t helped improve his image in the eyes of the public and has made him an easy target for industry ire.
Yet, as Shkreli points out on his new website – Pharma Skeletons – companies big and small have been offenders of drug price hikes and price gouging.
Shkreli lists several dozen such offenses. They include AbbVie raising the price of blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira (adalimumab), despite it being the best-selling drug in the world, as well as Biogen pricing its multiple sclerosis drug Tecfidera (dimethyl fumarate) higher in the U.S. than overseas.
While Shkreli is far from the model executive that the pharma industry wants the world to see, his role in the pricing scandal has highlighted the bad behavior of the industry as a whole. The problem of high drug pricing is ultimately not going to get solved by a public relations campaign.