Did you say, “Vioxx Lawsuit?”

Psst…a little secret from the pharma industry has just escaped, thanks to an article in the Financial Post on Friday, June 3rd. It starts,

Several of the world's leading pharmaceutical groups and at least one regulator are in talks to hire a computer consultancy company that has devised software to "spy" on Internet conversations about medicines...

The service scans Web logs -- or blogs -- news groups and forums for exchanges of information between patients.

After a brief description of how the 7,000 web-trawlers will work, the head of Netrank, the company that will undertake the spying, had this to say,

"You could say we are spying, but actually this information is in the public domain. We are doing it for the good of the patient, allowing companies to react more quickly to concerns."

Call me wacky. Call me weird. But corporations working together “for the good of the patient?” I believe that contravenes any corporation’s legal responsibility to work for the good of the share-holder…

How will the spy system work? Well,

It monitors the number of references to selected drugs every day and cross references them with the content of messages, analyzed by phrases including "side effects" and "legal action." Potentially, the system could help drug companies get in touch directly with those who send messages.

When I first read this article I was a little stunned that pharma would do this –spy on bloggers the way the CIA listens in on phone calls? Is no conversation sacred? But that, of course, was a naïve response. I actually think this whole story could be a smokescreen. It will raise some concerns about pharma communicating directly with consumers in these forums (in all countries but the USA and Australia, direct-to-consumer advertising by phrama is illegal or at least severely limited).

The fact is, corporations of all kinds are already watching and commenting on listservs and blogs. But they don’t go by names like “Jane Smith, Merck employee” rather as “Jane Smith, a mom just like you.”

Lots of political and corporate folks have been outed over the last few years by watchful list owners who have tracked suspicious comments back to their originating IP addresses. Big surprise, the comments that look, taste and smell of PR come from corporate IPs with a stake in promoting a certain idea or product.

Be ever watchful. And skeptical. If a comment to your blog reads like PR, odds are good it is PR.