Crusader’s Ads Take Aim at Drug Maker
The multimillionaire anti-cholesterol crusader who has taken on hamburger chains, food processors and milk makers over the last decade has picked a new target: the pharmaceutical industry.
In full-page ads running in about 40 newspapers today, Phil Sokolof criticizes Merck & Co. for the prices of its two cholesterol-lowering drugs.
“The Gouging of America,” shouts the ad’s inch-and-a-half-high headline.
The ads say Mevacor and Zocor accounted for $3.2 billion of Merck’s revenue last year but that the company nevertheless raised prices. “Merck, How Greedy Can You Get?” the ad asks.
Sokolof, a retired Omaha businessman, said he spent about $550,000 of his own money on the advertising.
“I want the public to be aware of how great these drugs are,” Sokolof said in an interview. “This is the greatest breakthrough since the advent of antibiotics. The shame of it is, many people cannot afford these drugs.”
Mevacor and Zocor are among four similar cholesterol medicines on the market. The ads say a week’s supply of the amount tested in big studies costs between $15 and $40, although Sokolof concedes that many people get by with lower, less expensive, doses.
Dr. Antonio Gotto, one of the country’s best-known cholesterol researchers, said he tried to talk Sokolof out of placing the ads. Gotto believes the medicines are reasonably priced.
“I often agree with Mr. Sokolof, but this time I disagreed. I think it’s unfair,” said Gotto, who is chairman of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Gotto noted that developing and testing such drugs is hugely expensive. These are priced about the same or lower than many new medicines used to treat chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, asthma and AIDS.
The drugs, known generically as statins, can bring down elevated cholesterol levels and reduce the risks of heart attack and death.
Merck spokesman John Doorley said the typical patient spends $2 or less a day for the drugs.
“Is it too much to charge less than $2 for a lifesaving medicine that took Merck over 30 years of research to develop and bring to market?” Doorley asked. “A Sunday newspaper often costs more.”
He said the money Sokolof paid for the newspaper ads “could have been better spent trying to figure out a way to get prescription drug coverage for the elderly.”
Sokolof, who takes cholesterol-lowering drugs himself, survived a heart attack in 1966.
He sold his Phillips Manufacturing Co. in 1992 and now devotes himself to bankrolling his National Heart Savers Assn.
Last year, Sokolof took out full-page ads attacking the dairy industry for labeling 2% milk “low-fat.” He said people should drink skim milk instead.
Some of his campaigns have led to notable changes. Several fast-food chains switched to vegetable oil after he called attention to their use of beef tallow to cook French fries. Many big food processors stopped using highly saturated coconut and palm oil in crackers and cookies after another of Sokolof’s ad blitzes.
