In another post, we outlined the alarming tendency for the life sciences to shoulder a disproportionate share of the blame for what ails the U.S. medical landscape and economy. A maligned, demonized pharmaceutical industry is a prominent scape goat in Washington, as a new Congress is about to try to demonstrate.

The larger issue is what the trend means for the long haul. Are medical device, drug and biotech companies forever discredited? Are there parallels between PhRMA and the proponents of nuclear power? Or will the public eventually see redeeming qualities in research-oriented companies? Can the reputation of the life sciences be rehabilitated?

We’re optimistic. Maybe it’s Merck’s resurgence in the face of 27,000 Vioxx lawsuits. Maybe it’s the fact that a new year has begun, and we ourselves survived another seasonal spasm of consumerism and overeating. It’s time to be positive, to be specific, to be scientific and to explain what the industry actually does, day in and day out.

Getting specific

Such an approach could help Americans see that the drug industry serves an indispensible role in taking basic scientific research and delivering it to a local pharmacy or loved one. For starters, the industry needs to begin to specify how its products improve life, save money, prevent surgery. Nebulous platitudes and generalizations are not going to cut it.

Facts and figures about the benefits of particular drugs, particular devices, should be offered. If the facts don’t exist, research to produce them should begin. Outcomes data about the benefits of drugs must flow copiously if the industry is ever to substantiate the view that it is a net contributor to the health of society. If the data must be purchased from insurers or third parties, it will be money well spent.

The crux of the problem is that for several years, eminent and learned physicians and scientists in academia have skillfully and repeatedly hammered the industry. They’ve written a stack of books. Industry’s scientists have written zero books. The failure to reply to the academic attack is surprising. In some quarters, i.e. lay people, the silence is interpreted as an admission of guilt. That’s why the poll numbers of the industry are in free fall. Some cardiologist from Harvard criticizes the industry, and a spokesperson issues a generic response. That’s a mismatch. The professors are going to win that sort of encounter every time. Personal injury lawyers figured this out long ago. They are light years ahead of the industry in arranging to air their experts’ views at pharma’s reputational expense.

Sitting it out?

If the life sciences seeks to reverse the slide in its reputation, its physicians and scientists (even a few economists) must be marshaled to participate in a national debate about drug prices and safety. If the industry’s most credentialed employees don’t show up for that discussion, ordinary viewers and readers will assume the industry has no serious response.

Where is the reputation of the life sciences being trashed? In the blogosphere, in talk shows, in the pages of newspapers and magazines. These are nasty, noisy, ungoverned places where scientific illiteracy is rampant and oversimplification is the order of the day. But industry’s scientists and physicians need to wade into that debate anyway.

Before the next crisis

Beyond that, senior executives at every company in the industry should be proactively, publicly, explaining the costs and difficulties of specific projects. Interviews should be granted. Articles should be written. Testimony should be given. Ideally, the education should happen before a crisis erupts. This will bank good will that can be spent later.

In that regard, there are lessons in Pfizer’s recent cancellation of an $800 million clinical trial of torcetrapib. (The cholesterol study was probably the single most expensive medical experiment ever undertaken.) To its credit, Pfizer made a tough decision about torcetrapib without even a day of delay. But the company also showed rare insight into the new public opinion environment in which the entire industry operates.

In the days after the drug was spiked, two (2!) of the mammoth company’s top executives were interviewed by a national newspaper. They discussed their mundane family rituals on the Saturday morning the decision was made. One executive had hoped to make a special breakfast (pancakes, as we recall) for his teenage daughter. Instead, he woke her up to apologize and headed to Pfizer’s office in Manhattan.

The story humanized and personalized an otherwise faceless pharmaceutical bureaucracy that much of the country apparently assumes to be a hybrid of Joseph Stalin’s politburo and Tony Soprano’s crew. At Pfizer, finally, someone recognizes that it’s time for that misperception to change.