The Wall Street Journal-20080119-The Informed Reader - Insights and Items of Interest From Other Sources
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The Informed Reader / Insights and Items of Interest From Other Sources
Health:
The Drug Industry's Latest Worry: Statins
The pharmaceutical industry's rough week ended on an especially gloomy note as reports emerged raising questions about the medications that have been among the industry's biggest money makers in recent years.
In a cover story, BusinessWeek casts doubt on the benefits of statins -- which block the formation of so-called bad cholesterol -- for non-high-risk heart patients. The article singles out Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor, noting that in a three-and-one-third-year study, the drug reduced the rate of heart attacks to 2% from 3%. In other words, to prevent one heart attack, 100 people needed to take the drug for more than three years. Those numbers have prompted some scientists to suggest that patients who don't have heart disease don't need statins. Drug companies made "everyone with high cholesterol think they really need to reduce it," says Bryan A. Liang, who directs the Institute of Health Law Studies at the California Western School of Law.
Pfizer reiterated to the newsweekly that statins reduce the "risk of death from coronary events," and proponents of statins say the impact needs to be calculated over a much longer time period. Taking the drugs for 30 years or more would result in between nine and 15 fewer heart attacks for every 100 people, observes Scott M. Grundy, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and head of the government committee that called for more aggressive use of statins.
Statins, moreover, are far from the only drugs that work in only a minority of people. And even if the chances of any one individual benefiting are slim, they still add up to significant gains across a broad population, a point BusinessWeek acknowledges: "If millions of people are taking statins, even the small benefit . . . would mean thousands of heart attacks are prevented." As some physicians and drug companies are likely to point out, the overall decrease in heart attacks also translates into lower expenditures on costly treatments such as defibrillators and stents.
-- BusinessWeek -- Jan. 28
Management:
How Companies Can Improve Social-Responsibility Effort
Business practices that emphasize social responsibility are all the rage, but few big companies are actually doing a good job of doing the right thing, says the Economist.
The newsweekly, which admits to being a longtime skeptic of the corporate-social-responsibility, or CSR, movement, says in a special report that it is clear most companies can no longer afford to ignore social and environmental matters. Still, businesses often make CSR- related decisions based on instinct rather than on evidence. And the admittedly limited evidence suggests that while CSR isn't ruinous to the bottom line, it is no bonanza, either: The two leading stock indexes designed to track companies that follow sustainable practices underperform the market. On the other hand, a major review of CSR studies found a small but positive link between social and financial performance.
To make CSR more viable, especially during an economic downturn, the authors say executives should focus on the areas relevant to their businesses -- companies are more likely to pursue socially oriented initiatives over the long term if they also offer financial benefits. An emphasis on social responsibility also can help businesses look outward more than they otherwise would, says the newsweekly. What's more, there are plenty of simple steps that aid both corporate balance sheets and society at large. Turning off office computers at night and discouraging the use of plastic bags are two measures that tend to be popular and beneficial.
Finally, businesses shouldn't be defensive about whether they are making a contribution to society. "The welfare [companies] create in the form of jobs, products and innovation dwarfs anything firms are likely to do explicitly in the name of CSR," says the Economist, displaying its characteristic faith in market-oriented solutions. "A socially conscious but bankrupt business is no good to anyone."
-- The Economist -- Jan. 19
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