Strong Medicine (13 page)

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remark, he laughed and said, "Smart boss you have. Just remember to treat

this doc that way at home." She threw a pillow at him then, after which

they wrestled playfully. The wrestling became something more, and they

ended up making love. After-ward Andrew rubbed his hands over Celia's

belly where her pregnancy was beginning to show and he said, "Take care

of this little guy, and remember while he's in there-for you, no drugs of

any kind!"

It was a caution he had expressed when she was pregnant with Lisa, and

Celia said, "You feel strongly about that."

"Sure do." Andrew yawned. "Now let this god-doc get some sleep."

On another occasion when Teddy Upshaw was talking with Celia he described

"dirty selling" as "plain goddam stupid and not needed." Just the same,

he admitted, there was plenty of it in the pharmaceutical business,

"Don't think you and me are going to stop detail men saying what ain't

true, even at Felding-Roth. We won't. What we'll do, though, is show that

the other way is smarter."

Upshaw agreed with Celia about the need for sales training. He had been

given almost none himself and picked up his scientific knowledge-a

surprising amount, as she discovered-by self-education across the years.

The two of them got along well and quickly worked out a division of

duties. Celia wrote training programs, a task Upshaw disliked, and he put

them into effect, which he enjoyed.

One of Celia's innovations was a staged sales session between a detail

man and a doctor, with the former presenting one of FeldingRoth's drugs

and the latter asking tough, sometimes aggressive, questions. Usually

Teddy, Celia or another staffer played the doctor's role; occasionally,

with Andrew's help, a real doctor was persuaded to come in to add

reality. The sessions proved immensely popular, both with participants

and observers.

All new detail men hired by Felding-Roth were now given five weeks of

training, while others already employed were brought to headquarters in

small groups for a ten-day refresher. To everyone's surprise, the older

hands were not only cooperative but keen to learn. Celia, who also gave

regular lectures, was well liked. She discovered that detail men who had

been at the Waldorf sales meeting referred to her privately as "Joan of

Arc" because, as one explained, "while Jordan wasn't burned for heresy,

she came damn close."

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When Celia thought about the sales convention she realized, in retrospect,

how lucky she had been and how close she had come to wrecking her career.

At times she wondered: if Sam Hawthorne had not spoken up, defending her,

if she had been expelled from the convention and afterward lost her job,

would she have regretted acting as she did? She hoped not. She also hoped

she would have the same kind of fortitude in future in whatever other

confrontations lay ahead. For the moment, though, she was happy with the

outcome.

In her new job Celia saw a fair amount of Sam Hawthorne because, while

Teddy Upshaw reported to him officially, Sam took a personal interest in

the training program and was aware of Celia's contribution.

Less harmonious was Celia's relationship with the director of research, Dr.

Vincent Lord. Because of the need for scientific help with sales training

information, the Research Department had to be consulted frequently,

something Dr. Lord made clear was an imposition on his time. Yet he refused

to delegate responsibility to someone else. During one acerbic session with

him Celia was told, "You may have conned Mr. Camperdown and others into

letting you build your little empire, but you don't fool me."

Staying calm with an effort, she replied, "It isn't my 'empire,' I'm the

assistant, not the director, and would you prefer to have scientific

misinformation go out to doctors, the way it used to?"

"Either way," Dr. Lord said, glaring, "I doubt if you would know the

difference."

When she reported the conversation to Upshaw, he shrugged and said, "Vince

Lord is a first-class prick. But he's a prick who knows his science. Do you

want me to talk to Sam and get him kicked in the butt?"

"No," she said grimly. "I'll handle him my own way."

Her way involved collecting more insults, but at the same time learning

and, in the end, respecting Vincent Lord's competence. Though only seven

years older than Celia-he was thirty-six-his impressive qualifications

included a B.S. with honors from the University of Wisconsin, a Ph.D. in

chemistry from the University of Illinois, and membership in several

scientific honor societies. Vincent Lord had published papers while an

assistant professor at U of 1, papers describing his own significant

discoveries-one concerning oral contraception had led to improvements in

the Pill. What everyone expected, Celia learned, was that Dr. Lord

eventually

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would achieve a major breakthrough by developing an important new drug.

But nowhere en route had Vincent Lord learned to be a pleasant human being.

Perhaps, Celia thought, it was why he had remained a bachelor, though he

was attractive enough physically in an ascetic, austere way.

One day, attempting to improve their relationship, she suggested they use

first names, a practice common in the company. He advised her coldly, "It

would be better for both of us, Mrs. Jordan, to remember at all times the

difference in our status."

Celia continued to sense that the antagonism generated at their first

meeting a year and a half earlier would remain a permanent part of their

relationship. But despite it, and with Celia's persistence, the

contribution of the Research Department to sales training proved

substantial.

Not that the plan to raise the standard of detailing was entirely

successful or wholly accepted. It wasn't. Celia had wanted to set up a

report system, with spot checks of detail men's performance obtained

through confidential questionnaires. The questionnaires would be mailed to

doctors on whom the detail men called. The suggestion went to the highest

level and was vetoed.

Then Celia asked that letters of complaint about detail men sent in by

doctors be routed to Sales Training and a record kept. She knew from her

own contacts that such letters were mailed in, but no one in the company

ever admitted seeing them, and presumably they were buried in some archive,

with corrective action, if any, remaining secret. This request, too, was

refused.

As Teddy Upshaw patiently explained, "There's certain things the

powers-that-be don't want to know. You changed that some because when you

stood up at our sales bash and spelled things out, and then Sam fescued

you, they just weren't hidden anymore, and the brass had to make the best

of what was on their plate. But don't push 'ern too far too fast."

It sounded uncannily like the advice Sam Hawthorne had given before her

Waldorf speech and Celia retorted, "Someday the government is going to step

in and tell us what to do."

"You've said that before," Upshaw acknowledged, "and maybe you're right.

Also, maybe it's the only way."

They had left it there.

73

The subject of drugs and the pharmaceutical industry was on other minds

elsewhere.

Through much of 1960 the drug business was in the news almost daily-mostly

unfavorably. The continuing U.S. Senate hearings, chaired by Senator

Kefauver, were proving a gold mine for reporters and unexpected agony for

companies like Felding-Roth. Both outcomes were due, in part, to skillful

staging by the senator and his staff.

Like all such congressional hearings, much of the emphasis was on politics,

with a bias decided in advance. As a Washington reporter, Douglass Cater,

wrote, "They . . . move from a preconceived idea to a predetermined

conclusion." There was also, on the part of Estes Ktfauver and his aides,

a constant quest for headlines; thus their presentations were one-sided.

The senator proved a maestro at disclosing sensational charges just before

reporters had to leave the hearing room to file their stories-11:30 A.M.

for afternoon papers, 4:30 P.m. for morning editions. As a result,

rebuttals occurred with reporters absent.

Despite the unfairness, certain ugly truths emerged. They revealed

excessive pricing of drugs; unlawful collusive price-fixing; illegally

rigged bids for government contracts for supplying drugs; misleading

advertising to physicians, including minimizing or even ignoring dangerous

side effects; infiltration of the Food and Drug Administration by

pharmaceutical companies and acceptance by one high-ranking FDA official of

"honorariums" totaling $287,000 from a drug firm source.

Newspaper headlines, though sometimes one-sided, zeroed in on some abuses.

SENATORS FIND 1,118% DRUG MARKUP

-Washington Evening Star

SENATE PANEL CITES MARKUP ON DRUGS

Ranging to 7,079%

-New York Times

DRUG PERIL CLAIMED

-Miarni Herald

BIG PROFIT FOUND IN TRANQUILIZERS

Chlorpromazine 6 Times Costlier in U.S. than in Paris

-New York Times

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Testimony revealed that drugs which had been discovered and developed in

foreign countries were far cheaper in those countries than in the United

States. This was absurd, it was pointed out, since the American companies

marketing the drugs had incurred no development costs.

In French drugstores, for example, fifty tablets of chlorpromazine cost

fifty-one cents compared with three dollars and three cents in the United

States. Similarly, the U.S. price of reserpine was three times greater

than in Europe where the drug was developed.

Another strange contrast was that American-made penicillin was selling

in Mexico for two thirds of its retail price at home. These and other

American prices, it was suggested, were high because of unlawful

collusion between manufacturers.

PET FOOD SAID BETTER INSPECTED THAN DRUGS

-Los Angeles Times

FDA AIDE'S TALK EDITED BY AD MAN

Drag Firm Slogan Written Into Speech

-New York Times

Testimony disclosed that a speech delivered by an FDA division head at

an International Antibiotics Symposium had been sent to a drug company,

Pfizer, for prior approval. An advertising copywriter changed the text

to include, by inference, a plug for a Pfizer product, Sigmamycin. Later

the drug company bought 260,000 reprints of the speech, treating it as

an FDA endorsement.

The disagreeable newspaper headlines continued, sometimes on successive

days, in big and small cities coast to coast, with TV and radio adding

their reports.

All in all, as Celia expressed it to Andrew in December, "It hasn't been

a year for boasting about where I work."

At the time, Celia was on leave of absence because their second child had

been born in late October, again in accord with Celia's schedule. As

Andrew had been confident, it was a boy. They named him Bruce.