PhRMA Pays Novelist for Horror Story About Importing Drugs From Canada

[LynneSin]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-golden27oct27,1,784104.column?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

Fiction Genre Fits Big Pharma

Business, like politics, sometimes makes strange bedfellows. But more often than not, the couples it brings together are perfectly matched.

That seemed to be the case when the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, hooked up with Michael Viner.

Drug companies aren't known for their devotion to the Platonic ideal of truth. Just look at their TV ad campaign on behalf of the self-serving prescription discount plan they've placed on next month's ballot (Proposition 78), which they represent as a selfless contribution to the public weal.

Viner is an old hand at tabloid book publishing. His early venture, Los Angeles-based Dove Entertainment, became the go-to place for tell-all books related to O.J. Simpson, Heidi Fleiss and other L.A. notoriosi. In 1996, he and his wife, the actress Deborah Raffin, founded New Millennium Entertainment, which published such works as "Burning Down My Master's House," a memoir by the disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. (Raffin filed for divorce last year.)

<<<<snip>>>>>

Back in April, a lawyer named Mark Barondess approached Viner with a proposal. Barondess is a consultant to PhRMA and an author whose self-help divorce book, "What Were You Thinking??," was recently published by Phoenix.

According to the proposal, PhRMA would pay Phoenix a six-figure sum for the marketing and production of a written-to-order fictional thriller. The plotline was what Hollywood would term high-concept — a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices. (Think "True Lies" meets the Physicians Desk Reference.)

If this scenario sounds familiar, it's because PhRMA has tried to scare state legislatures and Congress out of giving Americans access to cheap Canadian drugs by warning that terrorists might poison the imports.

:wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

[eallen]

1. That's despicable and hilarious all at once.

[wtmusic]

2. and to his credit he (apparently) ratted on them nt

[Trillo]

3. I've wondered how much "psyops" is in the fiction field.

This is probably the 'tip of the "agenda" iceburg.'

[Dogmudgeon]

4. I think I have to get my own meds adjusted

I thought I just read "PhRMA Pays Novelist for Horror Story About Importing Drugs From Canada".

I know I shouldn't have done all that acid in the sixties, especially since I was still eleven years old on New Year's Day 1970.

--p!