EDIT: This blog was originally posted on Medium on May 5 2020. I have edited the title and introduction but left the rest of the article as it was.
Roche Pharmaceuticals met with public indignation at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020, after their reluctance to share the recipe for a solution essential to do corona-tests: the lysis buffer. They came around after severe criticism, but the damage was already done: Big Pharma’s well-established reputation problem was confirmed yet again. How does this behaviour come about? Those people in the boardrooms are hardly sitting together hatching wicked plans for global domination, whilst petting their silver Persian cats. Or are they? And what does that have to do with the top 5 regrets of the dying?
Photo by Ibrahim Boran on Unsplash
How It All Started
It was Dutch investigative journalism platform Follow the Money that first came out with the news. In their article they describe Roche’s unwillingness to share a recipe vital to increase the Corona testing capacity. Roche could only fulfil 30% of the demand for this lysis buffer. With Roche owning 80% of the market for the machines to do these tests with, that’s a problem. And even though the CEO of Roche Diagnostics Netherlands appeared on Dutch television denying there was a problem, Roche later admitted that the truth was more complicated. They’ve since yielded to public opinion and shared their recipe to facilitate 3rd party fabrication. Disappointingly however, a later article by Follow The Money describes Roche missing from a list of companies in a Dutch task force charged with dramatically expanding the corona testing capacity by working together with a range of partners from the industry. So far, Roche doesn’t look too good. But let’s get to know our culprit a bit better.
Roche’s Purpose
Roche describes their purpose as “Doing now what patients need next”. It suggests a worldview revolving around care and community, around empathy with patients’ needs and science at the service of our collective wellbeing. Roche does a pretty good job to tell a story consistent with that worldview. They share experiences of patients with complex diseases and misdiagnosis, they showcase their endeavours to help those less fortunate and post updates and articles on current R&D advances. They have a well-established philanthropic agenda that supports humanitarian and social development efforts, science education, the arts. Really not all evil. A little more research shows that 84% of their employees recommend working there and 93% of them support their CEO. Though not exceptional compared to similar companies, they are pretty great numbers.
They have a well-established philanthropic agenda that supports humanitarian and social development efforts, science education, the arts. Really not all evil.
Though information on their website is obviously biased, I’m inclined to think they would not pull all of that out of thin air: Roche really do a lot of positive work. The problem, then, doesn’t lie with them having bad intentions per sé. It’s pretty clear that at least a substantial part of the organisation is invested in making the world a healthier, more equitable place. But there is another side to this company and it has to do with how pharmaceutical companies make money: by selling medicine and technologies that they’ve either developed or bought. Roche’s UK Comms Chief describes how long R&D lead-times, low success rates and patent term limits can make it hard to earn money. This MIT research from 2018 puts success rates of clinical research at only 14%. And that’s just the drugs that make it to clinical trials.
Still, global pharmaceutical revenues broke the 1 trillion US dollar barrier for the first time in 2014, with ‘only’ 145 billion US dollars invested globally in R&D. And in that environment, Roche managed to become the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, which illustrates that they were exceptionally successful in pursuing a different purpose from that lofty one mentioned above. Roche’s main purpose, of course, is to create shareholder value through growth. It’s any public company’s main driver. And the tactics companies in this industry employ to stake their claim, are far from lofty:
From this study on pharmaceutical innovation: “..patent protection in the pharmaceutical industry is used as a defensive instrument, configuring a commonly applied anti-competitive practice. Some of strategies employed include so-called blocking (acquiring and not using new patents) and fencing (requesting patenting for any possible technology that can be used by a competitor) techniques, through which companies try to prevent the entry of new competitors into the market as well as to advance on their direct competitors”
The Pharmaceutical industry clearly is a highly competitive market, and it doesn’t bring out the best in its players. In this light their protective attitude is quite understandable. It is part of why they managed to become so successful and a reflex that must be deeply engrained in their company character. So to what extent can we blame Roche for their behaviour? Are they not the product of a system that elevates competition over collaboration, profit over wellbeing? When an economy is structured upon a doctrine of growth, can we really expect companies not to pursue that goal?
“But this is a global healthcare crisis!” Well, yes. And not stepping up to do your part does seem glaringly unethical. Especially when others do seem to do so. It testifies of a troubling corporate environment that has seemingly lost touch with their human values. And Roche -or the pharmaceutical industry- isn’t alone in facing this problem. Amazon’s handling of employee activism around its COVID-19 response is just one example of several corporates being criticised for their behaviour.
The Challenge of Doing Good
Not losing touch though, pursuing idealistic goals and being assertive about it, is difficult, especially for a public company. Short term profit-minded shareholders tend to throw up a stir when anything other than sub-optimal dividends are attained. Unilever is the classic example. Their previous CEO, Paul Polman, famously pursued an ambitious sustainability agenda for the company in their Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. Now praised for its courage and vision, it also made them vulnerable. In 2017, Unilever parried a take-over Kraft Heinz, but ended up selling its spreads business -with brands like Becel- for almost 7 billion euros, returning the cash to shareholders to quiet the cry for short term results.
Unilever’s experience illustrates the contradictory forces many companies face in the pursuit of their purpose.
Unilever’s experience illustrates the contradictory forces many companies face in the pursuit of their purpose. It took a visionary CEO to lay down an ambitious purpose-driven mission to make Unilever a corporate pioneer in sustainability. So yes, there are ways to do better, but it takes exceptional leadership skills. The extraordinary circumstances we are facing with COVID-19, shows how for some companies, their commercial purpose is so deeply engrained in their day-to-day reality, that even when public opinion seems so unanimously against it, even when it seems so ethically obvious to shove it aside, they cannot help but to yield to it.
Roche, of course, is not evil. But global domination is definitely their most important ambition. And that has unethical, even evil effects. That ambition and its consequences are conditioned by a political and economic system that we all help to sustain. So as long as our society supports an amoral system built for growth, competition and exploitation, we should pauze before decrying the actions of those who thrive in it. Each of us -yes also Roche’s leadership- does have a responsibility to question that system though. To ask whether we are doing right by ourselves and our community by upholding it, even excelling in it, to the extent that we lose sight of the things that give life meaning. Because in the end, that is what this is about. A fundamental question that we tend to cast aside in favour of the pressing realities of the day. But if we want businesses to behave according to what we as a society think is morally desirable, then we need to define what that is. We need to redefine the things that give life value and organise our society accordingly.
We need to redefine the things that give life value and organise our society accordingly.
That might seem like a big question; one that each person has to answer for themselves. And it is: we are all unique individuals with our own characters, desires and needs. But as humans we do also have universal needs, things we value because we are part of this big biological family.
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash
The Meaning of Life
Humans, as far as we know, are the only creature that is aware of its own mortality. And in the face of that mortality, humans have wondered: what is it all for? When you know you will die, inevitably, you will at one point wonder about what life is and what gives it meaning. The closer you are confronted with your imminent death, the more immediate this question becomes.
In her famous book Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware shares her experiences in palliative care. Talking to people close to death gave her a new understanding of life, especially hearing the regrets of those lingering on death’s doorstep. Her TEDx-talk gives a much more complete account of her experiences, but let me briefly summarize what the regrets came down to:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Courage, connection and self-empathy. Those are the universal values we should build a socio-economic system on. Humans are a deeply empathetic and social species. Which is of course why we cry out in indignation when people or businesses act without empathy. It is also our pitfall. People will go to great lengths to remain in the relative safety of their family, social group, religious community, or professional environment, even to their own detriment. What is known is sometimes less scary than what is unknown. And what you know is often what you’ve come to identity with: upholding what society deems positive, often perpetuating a deeply held negative self-image at the same time. We’ve all heard of ‘impostor syndrome’. That’s why it takes courage and self-empathy to follow your own path. The first step is always away from somewhere, outward into the unknown where you have to face your fears of inadequacy. And that’s scary.
Punishment and Reward
For centuries we have been brought up with a different idea: to live a life true to our God(s). A life of punishment and reward, hell and heaven. And this type of thinking still dominates our cultural discourse. Media, politics, public opinion, the way we raise our children: blame and judgement are a central part of how we communicate, think and operate. Do your job well, get a cookie, or a bonus, make a mistake, get cut or stand in the corner. These two motivational modes are well-known in both economical and psychological theory: extrinsic motivation, acting to earn a reward or avoid punishment, and intrinsic motivated, acting because it’s personally rewarding.
The growth economy is literally stressing us out, inhibiting empathic behaviour and making it incredibly hard to carve out our own path in life.
We are culturally conditioned to be extrinsically motivated. The problem is that it often works counterproductively: people often perform worse with extrinsic incentives. Worse even, they can crowd out intrinsic motivation, so even if you did like doing a certain job, you become less motivated to do it after the external reward stops. Extrinsically motivated people in general are more prone to stress and burn-out than intrinsically motivated people and yet we find ourselves in a society that is built on the precepts of punishment and reward. The growth economy is literally stressing us out, inhibiting empathic behaviour and making it incredibly hard to carve out our own path in life.
The Dilemma
Roche’s response to the crisis so far, contrasted by their stated purpose, illustrates the problem we face across industries, across the globe. Every person who is part of society faces this dilemma: to want to do what you feel is right, but fearing the ramifications of ‘the real world’, which often come down to the rewards and punishments of a financial reality. Roche couldn’t win: had they shared their recipe from the start, jeopardising a major income-flow, shareholders might have protested much in the way that they did with Unilever. Of course now, the public derides them for being unethical and callous in the face of humanitarian hardship. Making the right choice takes courage.
The COVID-crisis reminds us of what’s important in life, and hopefully that will motivate us to consider alternative ways of organising our economy. To build a society that encourages its people to live a life true to themselves. How would businesses behave? What would we teach our children? What would healthcare, public transportation, food production, public spaces look like? And what part does each of us have to play? Because COVID also reminds us that each of us has a part to play. Some fight on the frontlines, others contribute simply by staying at home, others still spring into action with creative solutions to help their communities. If anything, this global event might show us that we are all in this together. This struggle to become better than we were is what binds us as humans and the best way to contribute, is to be courageous, to stay close to your loved ones and be true to yourself.