We're So Brave and Wonderful, No-One Good Could Criticize Us

Years ago, in a wonderful book called We're So Big and Powerful Nothing Bad Can Happen to Us: An Investigation of America's Crisis Prone Corporations, USC professor and crisis management expert Ian Mitroff examined some of the belief systems that prevent companies handling crises and issues effectively. In discussing the pharmaceutical industry, he identified a key problem: the pharma industry develops products that save lives; it is, therefore, a noble industry; any criticism of such a noble industry must be driven by ignoble motives; because critics are arguing in bad faith and from bad motives, there's no reason to listen to them or engage with them.

To see how little the world has changed in the intervening 20 years, check out this Wall Street Journal op-ed by David Shaywitz (a management consultant) and Thomas Stossel (a professor of medicine at Harvard), which makes almost precisely the argument described above.

"Given the vital role of medical products companies and the magnitude of their challenges, one might imagine that this industry would be admired," the authors write. "But this enlightened view of industry is not widespread.

"This is largely because of the disproportionate influence of a coterie of prominent critics... who routinely vilify the medical products industry and portray academics working with it as traitors and sellouts."

Their motives could not possibly pure, as the ad hominem nature of the authors' response makes clear: "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."

And just in case you still might want to take these critics seriously, let's slap them with a name--something juvenile like feminazis--that dehumanizes and delegitimizes the opposition: "pharmascolds" will do. (The authors actually take a little time out to congratulate themselves on the cleverness of their name-calling.)

Thankfully, many of the professional communicators in the pharmaceutical industry have showed a willingness to engage with their critics, to acknowledge that there are, in fact, legitimate criticisms of the industry's marketing and pricing policies.

The Journal has no time for such compromise and conciliation, of course, because its interest is in demonizing those who do not share its ideology, not in helping pharmaceutical companies bring their products to market faster and cheaper.