Pharmascolds

Those critical of the relationship between (the pharmaceutical) industry and academic medical research. (Pharmaceutical + scolds.)

Discussing the “arduous, expensive and underappreciated journey” of getting new medicines to market, David Shaywitz and Thomas Stossel, in The Wall Street Journal, explored why Big Pharma’s attempts to work with academic research are often viewed with cynicism:

This is largely because of the disproportionate influence of a coterie of prominent critics we have previously dubbed “pharmascolds,” who routinely vilify the medical products industry and portray academics working with it as traitors and sellouts. 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. They extrapolate from occasional behavioral lapses in industry – which is equally, if not more prevalent, in universities – to demonize the market and portray scientific medicine as an ascetic religion, which it is not.

(Shaywitz and Stossel appear to have coined their term in a May 2008 Weekly Standard article. Entitled “Attack of the Pharmascolds: The self-righteous foes of industry-funded medical research,” the article responded to the news that a lung cancer study had received funding from big tobacco, and asked “Can bad companies fund good research?”)