netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Allergan, Inc., is a global specialty pharmaceutical company. Their product ranges include ophthalmic pharmaceuticals, dermatology products, and neurological products.
Spearheaded by Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Pyott, recognized as one of America's best-rated CEOs,1,2 and backed by a strong and experienced senior management team,3,4 Allergan possesses a unique blend of talent, skills, science and business acumen to anticipate and respond to its customer and patient needs.
Together, Allergan's executive team sets a precedent for commitment that extends throughout the company: commitment to understanding and meeting the unmet medical needs of patients; to fiscal, social and corporate responsibility; and to listening to our customers and employees. As a result, we share a unified vision of what it means to bring the best of medicine to life. We actualize this vision through the execution of our strategic objectives as a company, and consider it realized when innovative ideas are translated into products that make life better.
For the past few months, a billboard campaign promoting the Allergan Lap Band surgical device for gastric binding - a way to lose weight - has caused a controversy in Southern California over concerns that risks are not disclosed sufficiently. The Los Angeles County public health director, in fact, wrote the FDA to ask for an investigation, prompting some negative publicity (read the letter).
The billboards are actually sponsored by a marketing firm on behalf of doctors and clinics, which are, essentially, Allergan customers. The company, of course, benefits from this sort of exposure, yet initially did not appear to go out of its way to disavow the campaign. An Allergan spokeswoman told The Los Angeles Times the ads could not be regulated, because they are not Allergan ads, although a letter was written to the FDA to create some distance.
But so a recent column in the paper chastised Allergan for wanting “it both ways. It wants to hawk its product to consumers…and is apparently happy to profit from its own customers’ ad campaigns featuring claims about the product that are devoid of context or qualifications. But when push comes to shove, it also wants to claim the end results are not its responsibility.” It is worth noting, as well, that billboards are located not far from Allergan offices.
This is not good timing for Allergan, given that the company wants the FDA to allow surgery on a wider pool of overweight consumers - about 2 million, in fact, according to LA County public health director Jonathan Fielding. And Allergan has also been running its own online campaign to convince Congress to improve access to the surgical procedure, which is another way of seeking greater reimbursement and guidelines that mention surgery as an option.
And so Allergan ceo David Pyott, who was making the rounds yesterday to chat about a recent earnings report, is now scrambling to disassociate the company from the not-so-subtle message on the billboards that “Diets fail! The Lap-Band works!” To wit, he tells the paper “that isn’t the wording I would use. We put patients’ welfare and safety at the top, so I wouldn’t support it.”
He adds that Allergan is coming up with voluntary guidelines to surgeons to remind them that any ads should include clear statements about lap band risks. And Pyott hopes to prevent billboards from appearing elswhere in the US, although how that is possible remains unclear, given that Allergan insists there is no formal connection to the marketing company which, by the way, maintains new ads will contain risk info. The paper notes three people in its region recently died following the procedure, which Pyott maintains is safe and effective, and yielded a mortality rate of 1 in 2,000 patients.
Nonetheless, Pyott could have been more forceful publicly and done so sooner. Even taking the company at its word that there is no tie to the marketing company - or any clinic or doc that hired the firm - Allergan still had a responsibility to act. The failure to do so allowed the impression to persist that Allergan endorsed a message that was incomplete and irresponsible. Yet Pyott did not address the issue until negative publicity ensued. He wants federal endorsement for a safe and effective product. He should provide effective leadership.
Spearheaded by Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Pyott, recognized as one of America's best-rated CEOs,1,2 and backed by a strong and experienced senior management team,3,4 Allergan possesses a unique blend of talent, skills, science and business acumen to anticipate and respond to its customer and patient needs.
Together, Allergan's executive team sets a precedent for commitment that extends throughout the company: commitment to understanding and meeting the unmet medical needs of patients; to fiscal, social and corporate responsibility; and to listening to our customers and employees. As a result, we share a unified vision of what it means to bring the best of medicine to life. We actualize this vision through the execution of our strategic objectives as a company, and consider it realized when innovative ideas are translated into products that make life better.
For the past few months, a billboard campaign promoting the Allergan Lap Band surgical device for gastric binding - a way to lose weight - has caused a controversy in Southern California over concerns that risks are not disclosed sufficiently. The Los Angeles County public health director, in fact, wrote the FDA to ask for an investigation, prompting some negative publicity (read the letter).
The billboards are actually sponsored by a marketing firm on behalf of doctors and clinics, which are, essentially, Allergan customers. The company, of course, benefits from this sort of exposure, yet initially did not appear to go out of its way to disavow the campaign. An Allergan spokeswoman told The Los Angeles Times the ads could not be regulated, because they are not Allergan ads, although a letter was written to the FDA to create some distance.
But so a recent column in the paper chastised Allergan for wanting “it both ways. It wants to hawk its product to consumers…and is apparently happy to profit from its own customers’ ad campaigns featuring claims about the product that are devoid of context or qualifications. But when push comes to shove, it also wants to claim the end results are not its responsibility.” It is worth noting, as well, that billboards are located not far from Allergan offices.
This is not good timing for Allergan, given that the company wants the FDA to allow surgery on a wider pool of overweight consumers - about 2 million, in fact, according to LA County public health director Jonathan Fielding. And Allergan has also been running its own online campaign to convince Congress to improve access to the surgical procedure, which is another way of seeking greater reimbursement and guidelines that mention surgery as an option.
And so Allergan ceo David Pyott, who was making the rounds yesterday to chat about a recent earnings report, is now scrambling to disassociate the company from the not-so-subtle message on the billboards that “Diets fail! The Lap-Band works!” To wit, he tells the paper “that isn’t the wording I would use. We put patients’ welfare and safety at the top, so I wouldn’t support it.”
He adds that Allergan is coming up with voluntary guidelines to surgeons to remind them that any ads should include clear statements about lap band risks. And Pyott hopes to prevent billboards from appearing elswhere in the US, although how that is possible remains unclear, given that Allergan insists there is no formal connection to the marketing company which, by the way, maintains new ads will contain risk info. The paper notes three people in its region recently died following the procedure, which Pyott maintains is safe and effective, and yielded a mortality rate of 1 in 2,000 patients.
Nonetheless, Pyott could have been more forceful publicly and done so sooner. Even taking the company at its word that there is no tie to the marketing company - or any clinic or doc that hired the firm - Allergan still had a responsibility to act. The failure to do so allowed the impression to persist that Allergan endorsed a message that was incomplete and irresponsible. Yet Pyott did not address the issue until negative publicity ensued. He wants federal endorsement for a safe and effective product. He should provide effective leadership.