By: E&P Staff Everyone seems to have a blog or online newspaper nowadays, even the embattled drug giant Pfizer. And what is Pfizer using its for? Warning its employee about filmmaker Michael Moore.
The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday quoted Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development, saying, "We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary -- and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you'll know who it is."
The company is hardly alone. As Elaine Dutka put it in the Times, ?America's pharmaceutical industry is putting out an advisory about the latest potential threat to its health: Michael Moore.?
The director of ?Fahrenheit 9/11? and other muckraking films is next targeting the health care/insurance/drug company system, in a movie that may be called ?Sicko.?
According to Dutka, ?At least six of the nation's largest companies already have issued internal notices to their work forces, preparing them for potential ambushes.? These include GlaxoSmithKline, the second-largest in retail sales.
"We have an image problem, not only with Michael Moore, but with the general public," said M.J. Fingland, senior director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Dutka noted ?rumors? that Moore ?has hired actors to portray pharmaceutical salesmen who offer gifts to doctors who promote their products. There's also word that he's offered physicians $50,000 apiece to install secret cameras in their offices in an effort to document alleged corruption.?
Reached at home in Michigan, the director denied paying doctors to help him install secret cameras. "I didn't need to,? he said. ?So many doctors have offered to help, for free, in an effort to expose the system.? The movie, he added, is only in its early stages "and already people are freaky-deaky."
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