David Holmes

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#BioMarin CEO has temper tantrum meltdown over email

In Crisis Management on September 24, 2013 at 2:33 pm

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become. – Brooke Foss Westcott, British Theologian, 1825-1901

BioMarin Pharmaceutical continues on the war path

Two weeks ago, I forewarned that BioMarin Pharmaceutical was headed toward a crisis and last week we discussed the accidental “reply-all” email the CEO sent out revealing the company’s crisis strategy.  I could never have predicted this week’s developments.

I have witnessed and studied crises of one sort or another over the last two decades and I have difficulty recalling too many examples of companies handling issues they face as poorly as BioMarin has.

Supporters of Andrea Sloan have forwarded emails I will share below, and in conversation with Andrea, she discussed with me her feeling of having been mislead by the company’s Chief Medical Officer, who is no longer a licensed doctor.

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BioMarin reveals crisis strategy in accidental “Reply-All”

In Crisis Management on September 16, 2013 at 4:54 pm

Everyone has hit “Reply-All” on an email by accident at one time or another. It is not often, though, that the CEO of a public company facing a full-blown media crisis emails his strategy to the people he is trying to avoid.

Last week I discussed the predictable crisis that BioMarin pharmaceutical company is heading toward and its ethical obligation to at least try to avoid that crisis. Since that article was published, BioMarin seems determined to prove me prescient.

It is difficult to imagine a company less prepared for a crisis of its own making as BioMarin circles its wagons to wage a media war against an ovarian cancer patient named Andrea Sloan who has only days to receive treatment.

This week, we will look a little deeper into the company and their CEO’s strategy revealed in his “Reply-All” email on which he included Andrea Sloan’s supporters, and which was subsequently provided to me.

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PR crisis in the making at BioMarin Pharmaceutical

In Crisis Management, Uncategorized on September 10, 2013 at 1:40 pm

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Today I examine a company who not only serves as an example of the ethical imperative in the structure and design of a business, but I may even be able to forecast a crisis in the making. Most case-studies of crises occur after a crisis has ended or at least after it has begun, but the actions of the pharmaceutical company BioMarin over the last several weeks – while not reaching crisis yet – are moving quickly in the direction of one.

The background of the story is that BioMarin has created a drug called BMN673 that has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but which has shown enormous promise to patients who have gone through trials of the drug. Between 5-10% of ovarian cancer patients develop the cancer due to a genetic mutation called BRCA1. This drug was created for that rarer set of ovarian cancer patients. Creating drugs for rarer diseases is BioMarin’s specialty.

A young attorney in Austin, Texas named Andrea Sloan has the BRCA1 mutation and has fought ovarian cancer off and on since 2007. Traditional treatments are failing at this point, and Andrea’s doctors at MD Anderson view BMN673 as Andrea’s best and possibly last hope.

By what ethical standard can BioMarin continue to deny Andrea Sloan this drug which she must get within the next several days? A moral imperative should supersede a financial one when a person’s life is on the line, but how would BioMarin even face a financial risk in allowing this compassionate use of their innovative drug?

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