Earn Comments for Your Blogs the Organic Way

When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, I learned that the U.S. Food and Drug Admnistration would send the equivalent of undercover agents to industry trade shows. These spies would hang around company booths listening for any sales or marketing rep to make a claim or statement that violated FDA guidelines. The FDA would promptly turn around and fine the offending company.

It is this fear that leads nearly anybody working for a pharma to proclaim, “We can’t blog.” The same is true in other heavily regulated industries like financial services. I disagree, but my argument centers around blogging on non-product issues. For example, I love the idea of a blog written by the top R&D executive so he can talk about drug research in general—new techniques, equipment, how to staff an R&D function, various stages of drug research and other topics that would make every college chemistry student an avid reader and potential recruit.

So I was a bit surprised to find that Glaxo SmithKline had launched