M's the Word: Learning to take our medicine

Why a little dose of fear is good for compliance.

By Malcolm Allison on Aug 23, 2010

Put your money where your mouth is. Well, thanks to a couple of unforeseen events, there is not that much money, so, as usual, I can just rant.

I have spent a good part of the past 20 years in cardiovascular marketing, which means I have had the fortune to work pre-launch, on launch campaigns, and on mature products, even on managing decline post loss of exclusivity.

Hypertension is a disease your doctor gives you.

You walk into his office on a Monday morning feeling a bit low, possibly as a result of too much booze over the weekend.

And in a desperate effort to avoid writing plumbo pendulism on your notes (Latin), he slips a cuff on you and tells you, triumphantly, that you have hypertension.

He gives you a script, committing you to at least one tablet per day for the rest of your natural life, with no let off for good behavior.

Now, the pharmaceutical companies have done a very good job, producing statistics about the long-term risks of high blood pressure.

But when you are hung over, shaking a little, you have almost no interest in the thought of premature demise due to a heart attack in 20 years.

So there are two problems: The disease is not serious enough to you, and the drug has no obvious effect. So your compliance is 60%.

Bad news for the long term, which you do not care about, but also bad news for the industry, which will sell less, and for society, which loses a viable human being well before his sell by date.

Now imagine this.

One effect of high blood pressure is damage to the small arteries in your body.

Perhaps thinking about those overworked kidneys, which you tortured on Saturday watching the football, might scare you a bitfor about a week, perhaps, until next Saturday.

But what about this: There are also tiny arteries in your eyeballs; chronic hypertension will screw them up as well.

And I guarantee you will feel a lot more nervous, and a lot more zealous about taking the medicine, if you think you might go blind.

Perhaps you might also feel a bit better about the medicine, and the company that made it.

One giant leap for mankind, one small step for the pharmaceutical industry.