Continuing my Arthur Hailey trip I downloaded the next book of his, “Strong Medicine” and finished reading it a few days back. Right around that time, we also watched the short web series on Jiocinema titled “Pill”. This web series is an eye opener, just as Strong Medicine was an eye opener in its times.
Summary of Strong Medicine
The book is written in 1984 and gives us a detailed view of the American Pharma industry. What started as a life saving industry soon became a money making business and saving lives was no longer the purpose.
The story starts with a young Celia convincing Dr. Andrew Jordan to try a drug on a patient who has no chances of survival. The drug, Lotromycin, brings back that near death patient. Dr. Jordan is super impressed with Celia and Celia had fallen in love with him. They get married and we see the ups and downs in the Pharma industry through Celia’s rise at Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals.
Celia is the first detail woman at Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals. She is ambitious, driven and a very capable detail woman who doesn’t lie to a doctor about the benefits of the drug she is detailing. She rises through the ranks at Felding-Roth by tagging her career wagon to Sam Hawthorne and performing at the highest levels.
The first drug that gets into trouble is Thalidomide. In Europe its prescribed to pregnant women and in the US Felding-Roth wanted to do the same as it helped with insomnia. Celia manages to deflect the use of Thalidomide in old age homes and when the reports start streaming in about the deformed babies born to women who took Thalidomide, Felding-Roth leadership is happy that they didn’t sell it to pregnant women.
These events are unfolding in the 60’s and 70’s in the US. The next thing we read about is Andrew’s boss Dr. Townsend becoming a drug addict because of the free samples that several Pharma detail men gave him. It’s unfortunately true and since the 70’s the drug addiction amongst doctors has just risen rather than reducing.
Celia and Andrew have two children and we see how Andrew, despite being a doctor, insists that Celia should not take any medicine during her pregnancy. There’s a fantastic statement made by him which should actually be framed by all of us “…as a doctor, I don’t believe a drug should be taken for anything that is just uncomfortable or self-limiting.” He gives the example of morning sickness during pregnancy, which is limited to the early months and then it just goes away. Today, we are ready to pop a pill for anything that is mildly uncomfortable :(.
Celia takes a career break when she opposes the most important drug that Felding-Roth wants to launch, Montayne. In the process she loses the friendship and mentoring of Sam Hawthorne. But in the end her stand is vindicated and she comes back to help resurrect Felding-Roth.
We read about how a FDA executive’s hand is forced by Felding-Roth in order to speeden up the launch of Montayne… how faked trial data is approved … and with the recent disaster of Pfizer’s covid vaccine, this book makes you doubt all the allopathy medicines. I guess, one has to be rational and only take the medicine in an emergency but switch to other holistic treatments like Ayurveda and Homeopathy.
My rating – 5/5. Beautifully written and amazing research has gone into writing this book.
Web Series Pill
Like I mentioned at the start of the blog, we watched this web series “Pill” on Jio Cinema around the same time. It speaks of recent times and about a fictitious drug company called Forever Cure Pharma, that’s trying to earn mega profits by taking shortcuts.
The web series begins with a group of people paying doctors a huge amount of money to fake the numbers for a drug trial. This is done to bring the drugs out in the market quickly and make money. One of the Govt drug inspectors called Gursimrit Kaur arrives at the Forever Cure Pharma’s lab to conduct a surprise inspection. They first try to bribe her team and when she stands her ground, one of the lab assistants runs away and throws a file in the sewer.
Providentially, this file reaches a dumping yard where accidentally a budding journalist, Noor Khan gets hold of it. Noor shows the file to every doctor in order to understand the information in the file because it talks of one drug that was given to his mother who had recently passed away. News about his enquiries spreads like wildfire and he is attacked brutally.
Finally the matter reaches Dr Prakash Chauhan, Deputy Medicine Controller, who is shown as an upright officer and he conducts his own lab tests. The lab tests prove that the Forever Cure medicines are not effective at all. Dr. Prakash Chauhan takes it upon himself to bring all the people involved in the scam to justice. The rest of the episodes are about the setbacks he faces and finally truth prevails. While the web series ends on a happy note, the Pharma industry has a lot to answer for and fix.
The web series Pill is the Strong Medicine that the Pharma industry needs … both in the US and everywhere in the world. Hopefully, we see the malpractices getting eliminated and more of the life saving drugs actually saving lives.
My rating for the web series – 5/5. It’s a little slow but speaks of an important industry. Do watch.
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