As a college sophomore I did market testing for a company hired by Pfizer Drug, the world's largest pharmaceutical company. I put a set of questions to farmers about Pfizer’s new drug to treat mastitis, a common disease in milk cows. I would drive to the designated farms, identify myself and write down everything the farmers said. Then I would “probe,” meaning urge the farmer to say more. I visited some 50 farmers in the course of a week. My finding showed that most used another Pfizer product to treat mastitis. Since that product seemed to work they saw no reason to switch to a new one.
In other words, Pfizer made two drugs to “cure” the same bacteria and then did “market research” to see if they could make profit from both. I discovered later that Pfizer withdrew the one I did marketing for because it did not sustain a market niche.
Why, I naively asked my economics professor, would a company spend time and money to manufacture a drug no more effective than the one they already had?
“Well,” he smiled, “to increase profits. Their marketing people must have seen evidence that farmers might be induced to buy both drugs, perhaps if they devised a clever sales pitch. That’s the way industry works.”
He neglected to add that multinational corporate operations also often utilize criminal activities as well as wasteful marketing devices to achieve their super profits. Chief executives will do almost anything -- and indeed have done -- they can get away with. In 2004, for example, Pfizer executives got caught promoting non-approved uses for one of its drugs and pled guilty to violating the Food and Drug Cosmetic Act. They paid “an undisclosed amount to settle the case” -- almost approached $500 million. (AP May 13, 2004)
In April 2005, the FDA removed Pfizer’s Bextra from store shelves because this painkiller apparently increased heart attack risks. Rumors of Pfizer using “influence” to get early FDA approval circulated widely before the federal agency decided by a narrow margin that its benefits outweighed potential threats. Bextra also produced rare, occasional fatal skin reactions. The FDA subsequently found that Pfizer’s product had no “demonstrated advantages” over other pain relievers. (http://www.corporatenarc.com/bextrascandal.php)
In the real corporate and “legal” world -- as shown in the fictional film “Michael Clayton” -- the very notion of conscience has long since disappeared. George Clooney plays the lead, a super priced New York law firm’s fixer (“janitor,” he calls himself). He cleans up messes, makes pay offs and facilitates ways out from “situations” created by irresponsible corporate clients and the corporate lawyers themselves -- like hit and run driving or paying off whoever needs to get paid to keep quiet. He dresses and lives in high style. Something about this fast, dangerous and expensive life supposedly seduces bright people -- modern Richard IIs and Lagos.
In the movie, Tilda Swinton as Laura, chief counsel for an agribusiness monster, portrays a corporate Lady Macbeth, devoting her legal and criminal brilliance to sustain corporate profits and growth. The real version of this film character, the antithesis of Doris Day, might also have vied for a top post in the Bush -- or Clinton -- Cabinet.
But the film does not imply that women dominate the realm of arch villainy. Quite the contrary! The male dominated corporation Board and chief council stand for “crime pays,” while Michael Clayton’s male heavy law firm stands for “crime pays our bills.” Sidney Pollack, as the head lawyer, possesses a lamb’s exterior and a wolf’s interior. These once bright and highly skilled people have developed ultra high living styles; their once treasured ethics have dissolved before their “needs.” “You know,” many an affluent person has said, “it costs a lot of money to be rich.”
Life without wealth after having it seems, well, impossible. So, rich lawyers and corporate executives narrow their world to perpetuating their comforts and privileges, no matter the erosive impact on their already diminished consciences.
In Michael Clayton, the fictional mega-corporation, like the real ones, manufactured a cancerous product and faces a class action law suit. Clayton’s firm works to disprove the facts: the product has caused deaths and illnesses. A company like Archer Daniels Midland promotes itself with reassuring commercials about how good and healthy the agricultural product is while in reality it is a killer. (From 1971-80, Ford built the Pinto. Its top executives knew of a design flaw, exploding gas tanks, but instead of recalling and refitting the cars, Ford execs decided it would cost less to pay off the lawsuits from the explosions. Finally, after public exposure of Ford's choice of profit over human lives Ford recalled the Pintos and replaced the exploding gas tanks.)
When facts like that become known, corporate lawyers suffer a clong – a legal term meaning a sudden rush of shit to the heart. In the film, the firm’s top litigator (Tom Wilkinson) suffers a combined epiphany and nervous breakdown. He can no longer defend murderous practices when he knows they kill nice and ordinary citizens. “Off his meds,” as Michael describes him, the rebel lawyer becomes corporate enemy number one.
In one Pfizer scandal, Ashok S. Idnani a former finance executive charged the company with hiring detectives to bribe officials, He said they employed corporate spies, and paid “competitor's employees to leak confidential information.” He provided ample documentation “to support his allegations.”
After working for 28 years as Deputy Manager in Pfizer’s finance department, Idnani accused Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler of illegal acts, sending documents to Pfizer's Corporate Compliance and Corporate Audit departments in support of his allegations. He was immediately fired. (http://peterrost.blogspot.com/2007/05/pfizer-finance-executive-blows-whi...)
Substitute for Pfizer, names like Merck and Johnson and Johnson. All have suffered similar revelations. Agri-business giants that receive billions in government subsidies -- like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland -- have also gotten caught price fixing and prematurely marketing genetically engineered products.
When Hollywood films focus on corporate crime and show how high priced lawyers cover up foul deeds, the public should gain awareness of the nature of big business. Thanks to proselytizers of the “private” and haters of the public spheres, corporate executives camouflage their criminal activities as providing for human progress. The PR campaigns led by sanctimonious prevarications of the Ronald Reagans and George W. Bushs get repeated on National Public Radio -- or National Pandering Radio?
Films like “Michael Clayton” reveal capitalism’s real nature -- as did “Erin Brockovich” some years ago. The real and fictional Erin, a law clerk in mini skirts, took on a corporate utility giant and won. She organized poor people. Like Erin, Clayton is divorced and occasionally takes care of his grade school age son. He comes from a semi-dysfunctional policeman’s family. His addict brother has cost him lots of money because of a failed bar-restaurant operation financed by shady guys who want their loans paid off or else. Michael lives inside a psychic hell, feeling his values like loyalty to and love for family at war with the way he earns his living -- love only for money, no matter how you get it. Events combine to force Michael to look at his life and make a choice. How long can he keep feeling like shell of a person with a gambling habit and nothing but a lousy, albeit high paying job? Clayton finally and reluctantly decides to act morally -- but only after he becomes a target of the corporate system’s need to literally kill off its enemies.
The movie does not provide much incentive to mobilize people as “Erin Brockovich” did. But it does spark resentment against the mega corporate thieves and killers so loved by George Bush and his gang, the guys telling us that government is inefficient and bad and the corporate world reeks with rationality and panache.
In April 2007, Pfizer pled guilty to charges of offering kickbacks for sales of its human growth hormone, Genotropin. The sentencing memorandum by the Department of Justice declared that Pfizer executives and had full “knowledge and approval.” The pharmaceutical giant was represented by a major Washington DC law firm, similar to the one in “Michael Clayton.”
Film audiences watch police enter to arrest the bad guys. The Genotropin criminals got merely a deferred prosecution agreement. That’s the difference between even good Hollywood films and bad American reality. Will you believe in a good looking, honest-faced and sincere sounding George Clooney who commits himself to decency over evil or -- well, we all know what Bush looks and sounds like.
