Name your favorite Pfizer Blunder in the last 15 years

Not firing the Four Twats of the Apocalypse - Mckay, McKenzie, Merson, and Rolph. If I used an electron microscope I could not locate their contribution. Wreck-It-Rolph and Reverend Merson were legendary in their dumbfuckerry.

 

launching Geodon, getting smacked in the face by Lilly, and trying to "get back at Lilly" for the next 10 years, throwing away hundreds of millions of $. now that's stupid.

 

The problem originated in Sandwich and Groton HTS. That is what started the whole sorry industry decline. The twats who sold the idea that screening more, faster, meant more marketed medicines. Steere and co, all thick as shit, bought the idea, and knew that they could sell it to, and I quote, "the superficial market intellects". And every other company copied our mistakes. And so started a 20 year period of imbeciles being promoted to positions of influence based on false measures of productivity. Rolph, MacKenzie, Merson and Co are mearly the repugnant offspring of that period of malignant stupidity. I suspect you hate them. But do you hate them as much as you hate yourself given that you made no attempt to stop them. Oh, that mortgage, oh that healthcare coverage. Let's not rock the boat until its sinking.

 

KELLI DUPREY

 

The quantity-over-quality approach meant that it was relatively easy to get promoted and Sandwich in the late 1990s onward had an astonishing number of highly questionable individuals working their way up to positions of influence, promoted not because of scientific or managerial ability but beccause they could claim to have met certain targets (i.e. compounds screened, CANs reached etc). Four of the main beneficieries from these false measures of productivity in Sandwich were Rolph, MacKay, MacKenzie and Merson (the first 3 are depressing - the last one just makes me laugh). It is no surprise to me that the company declined with such talent at the helm. Given that every other company copied our mistakes (i.e. screen, screen, screen), it is safe to assume that the consequences for them would be the same i.e. same type of twat would be promoted to positions of influence. So what the whole industry ended up with was a layer of Directors and VPs of such monumental scientific and technical incompetance that the fate was sealed, None of them actually brought anything to market and neither could they spot a drug in a pharmacy. So the quality-last approach produced the idiots that are now in the positions of power and influence in which their shortcomings can do the most damage, that damage being a dry pipeline.

 

A brilliant post, a rare pearl on this board. My $.02 is that one other huge mistake was the pulling of research funding from all but "potential blockbusters". It seems like going after blockbusters EXCLUSIVELY has dried up all pharma pipelines. Everyone is now scrambling to imitate the CCB and ACE and oral antibiotic me-too wars by going into diabetes. GSK, Novonordisk, Novartis, BMS-AZ, BI-Lilly, Johnson and Johnson, Merck are all there fighting over market share. What do WE have to show for our 70-something billion in R&D from 1999-2009? Vfend.

 

Indeed, one year our friends at Sandwich felt that it was a major accomplishment to have screened their one-millionth compound. Show me the drug which came from that.

 

Sadly the above is all true. Pfizer created an entire generation of leadership who had very little talent or vision, not just in R&D but across the corporation. It even happened in the corner office in NYC HQ - McKinnel and Kindler were the examples. Of the 80 billion profit we made from lipitor over one-half of that was wasted - completely wasted. And there was nothing we could do about it. We were forced to watch a lethal mixture of ignorance and arrogance in Pfizer leadership damage so many people and communities. Will we ever feel good about Pfizer? I don't think so.

 

If I were in Ian's shoes, I'd cut half of us, and get some hungry-ass contract folks in here with sample/signature and other incentives out the ying yang. I'll bet that the half that got retained would be motivated by fear to dramatically improve work activity! Next, I would make all RMs, DMs, RBDs and marketing managers interview with a real live HR consulting firm with no political ties to people here. If Consultant votes no on, buh-bye.

Crappy leadership here is a deep festering infection that has reached the bone. No more ATS, no more FFO. Those cuts were only debridement of dead flesh and skin on the lower leg. We need to just cut our losses, and amputate at the knee.

 

Rock Star Bob Ruffalo did exactly the same at Wyeth...lots of flashy presentations, ton of impressive looking metrics, always looking for press...and what came out it?? Very little

 

Ruffalo was a joke. I remember his presentations at meetings. It was all a numbers game. 33 compounds in Stage 1 leads to 20 in Stage 2, leads to 5 to Stage 3, leads to 3 NDA's. I believe they also paid or tied bonuses to this nonsense. It was this brilliance that led to Lybrel....the wonderful birth control pill that kept women from having a period for as long as they wanted-the same thing that could be accomplished by any other pill by just skipping the placebos!! Needless to say it flopped. Great science!

 

With Merson's managerial ability, failure should be quick arriving. Not much point in having a department when all the staff have either gassed themselves, thrown themselves under trains, slit their own throats or admitted themselves to the Dignitas clinic. Rather be a dead person than a Merson person.

 

Someone said it already, but it bears repeating: Torceptrapib, just shy of $1 billion. Pissed away.

 

Exubera. Yeah, patients will tote a bong into a restaurant and take a hit in the bathroom before they eat, right?

How could that one miss?

 

ha ha ha ha ha nope that's not it.... buying AstraSatanica !!!

 

I am suffering from Merson at this moment and cannot imagine a more insane situation. What of value has he published? Does he have any idea about what he is trying to do?

 

Geno bringing the Wyeth boys club to NYC. Watch out amateurs, strip clubs in the city are not for the weak at heart. Good luck boys, your clock(s) are ticking.

 

We were just ahead of our time. The bongs and schlongs culture was just being brainwashed. CO would have been a big market.

 

What came of it? Ruffalo walked away with over 15 mill in a severance package.

 

exactly, for all his smoke and mirrors