Are Philly-area pharmaceutical companies stoking hysteria in selling vaccines overseas? Wyeth's vaccine division in Collegeville, which broke the mold in the discovery and marketing of vaccines when it created its Prevnar for pneunoccocal disease several years ago, has run afoul of Polish authorities for its Prevnar ads there. Now Ed Silverman at
Pharmalot has picked up on another instance -- in Saudi Arabia -- where local authorities and parents are upset at Wyeth's promotions of its relatvely expensive Prevnar as if there is an epidemic, although there's no evidence of one.
The Arab News reported yesterday that a new Saudi ad begins with the camera showing a set of musical toys dangling over a baby’s cot and then moving to show the cot empty, followed by a flash of writing saying the baby has died due to not being vaccinated. The Arab News quotes a mother of two two-year-old twin boys, Sarah Muhammad, as saying: "I don’t like this type of advertising. It made me feel that my children will die without the vaccine." It then quotes an unnamed "Wyeth representative" as saying that, yes, children are dying of diseases preventable with Prevnar.
This comes five weeks after the Arab News reported that a different TV advertisement for a rotavius vaccine was aired in Saudi Arabia with a similiar panicky response. Arab News did not identifiy the rotavirus vaccine or the company. Merck in West Point, Pa. makes and markets RotaTeq in worldwide but it was unclear if this is the vaccine in question. Silverman opines on Wyeth's Prevner campaign: "Is it too much to ask of a marketing team to show a little good taste?"
Interestingly, however, the Arab News really raises a different issue: the problem of people relying on herbal folk fremedies instead of modern treatment and vaccinations. One expert it quotes, Khalid Danish, a consultant of neonatology at the King Fahd Military Medical Complex, seems to just as concerned about this as the Prevnar hype.
- Thomas Ginsberg
