Courtesy of the indefatigable Peter Rost at BrandweekNRx:

So this week I participated in a hearing in the Swedish Parliament on more effective use of pharmaceuticals.

Anders_lif_23I wasn’t the only one presenting, Anders Blanck, the deputy CEO of LIF/PhRMA (the Swedish pharmaceutical industry organization) also spoke for a short while.

He’s probably the only PhRMA executive in the world with long stylish hair and a pony tail, but hey, I thought he was cute and this is Sweden, after all.

What he said was, however, more important than his hair.

He strongly stated that “Direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals is not something we like or support.”

I couldn’t help myself, so I stood up and suggested that if he’d said that in the U.S. he’d been fired. He didn’t want to comment on that.

And clearly, what is good and bad in pharma-land, simply depends on what you can get away with.

We could use a few American pharma executives to break with the PhRMA party line and admit that Direct-to-Consumer Advertising is Not a Good Thing.