The most transparent era of the pharmaceutical industry

For 24 years, I worked for the international British group ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries). As Head of Communication, I experienced firsthand and as a central part of my job, an era of mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, and new mergers leading to the creation of the pharmaceutical company that today survives as AstraZeneca.
 
My tenure began in 1983, and from the outset, I advocated for informational transparency and proactive engagement with the media, contrasting with the traditional secrecy that has always characterized (and continues to characterize) the pharmaceutical industry. I established a Press Office and made daily contact with journalists a hallmark of the company. I edited a quarterly magazine when it was ICI and a monthly one when it became AstraZeneca, both aimed not only at employees but also at journalists, clients, and external collaborators. I edited a digital daily which was unique in history, covering all health-related news—including that of competitors—which earned it credibility and positioned it as the second most-read health digital in Spain.
 
With the arrival of Tom McKillop as CEO of AstraZeneca and Carlos Trias as President of the company in Spain, the company distinguished itself with its openness to society and informational transparency, somewhat influencing other labs, leading to the creation of ACOIF (Association of Pharmaceutical Industry Communicators). From 1999 to 2005, over 2,000 news stories were published annually in Spanish media about AstraZeneca and its products, a clear reflection of the daily work with journalists.
 
Finally, in 2005, Tom McKillop and Carlos Trias left the company, and the policy of informational transparency came to an end. In 2007, I joined as Head of Press for the Medical Association (OMC), where I worked until retirement. It was then, with the freedom and independence retirement offers, that I compiled all the public information I had been disseminating to the media over the years to shape this book. All the information, quotes, data, figures, statements, etc., in this book are taken from those public documents I shared with journalists during those years.
 
This is not, therefore, a "company book," nor was it written on the company's commission but was written on my own initiative, with total freedom and independence, based on and documented from the public work material I generated during those years, aimed at the media in the clearest example of informational transparency ever seen in the pharmaceutical industry. If I now bring it to light again through this book and publish it in English, it's so that no one forgets there was once a time when the pharmaceutical industry glimpsed informational transparency; a time we hope will be repeated one day.
 

“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca” (Vicente Fisac, Amazon) is available in
e-Book and print editions: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI