The Alpha Pill

The Alpha Pill

Welcome to the latest episode of Telling Tales, where we dive into intriguing stories that challenge our perceptions and stir our imaginations and we explore a tale of ambition, innovation, and the power of marketing in the pharmaceutical industry.

In a boardroom filled with accolades, Mark James, the CEO of a pharmaceutical giant, unveils a groundbreaking drug named "The Alpha Pill." Promising to revolutionise healthcare worldwide, the pill offers a cure for obesity and a myriad of other chronic diseases. However, there's a catch.

Transcript

 The Alpha Pill

Mark James sat at the head of the boardroom table. Clustered around him were his senior management team. The boardroom walls were covered in the memorabilia of a lifetime of achievement. His honorary doctorate from Newcastle University, the cover of Time magazine when he was named Man of the Year and the photograph of him shaking hands with Barack Obama. The whole room was a homage to his brilliance and success as the owner and CEO of the World’s largest pharmaceutical and beauty products company. 

Mark taped his water glass with his pen and the room fell silent.

“Let’s get on with this.” He pointed at the two people who sat at the far end of the table beside a very large computer screen which almost covered the wall.

“OK, David what have you got for us, don’t bore us all to death with page after page of charts. I have a busy day ahead and you asked for this meeting but there has been no agenda and no briefing document. So this better be good or you are in deep shit.” Mark’s management philosophy was simply to reward success and punish failure.

Doctor David Calder, the head of the pharmaceutical division, stood up. He was a man in his mid-fifties, balding with piercing blue eyes. He glanced nervously around the room and began.

“No notes please and turn off your phones. What I am about to tell you is top secret” There were a few brief moments whilst the board members put down their pens and turned off their phones. 

“Thank you. Now, simply put, we have developed a drug that will revolutionise not only our company but the health care of every country in the world, this is not only a cure for obesity. It will also eradicate diabetes, hypertension and chronic heart disease.”

On the screen, a picture flashed up of a diamond-shaped pill quickly followed by a photograph of three people. Two men and a woman all dressed in swimwear, their bodies toned and muscular.

The screen flashed back to the pill which was now titled “The Alpha Pill” 

“Ladies and gentlemen” David continued “The Alpha Pill will change our company and the world’s health forever.”

Now the screen displayed the photographs of the three people again but now they were all clinically obese, rolls of fat cascaded downwards culminating in feet that were swollen with edema. “

“We have conducted a limited trial and we will soon move to a full trial and then seek FDA, EMA and NICE approval for distribution in the US, EU and the UK. This photograph was taken 6 months before the other one. I assure you they have not been doctored and neither are they exceptional within the control group cohort. “David continued. he looked around the boardroom table and he could see that every single one of them had his total attention. 

“The reason there is no briefing paper or agenda is that this is so secret that no one outside this room and even my research team do not have the full picture, just Lucy Arthurs our head of marketing and myself.   

“Lucy, can you please give us the estimated projections on future earnings and profits?

Lucy moved to the side of the screen and addressed the room. “A modest estimate of potential global sales in between two hundred to three hundred billion UK pounds with a cost of sales at around fifteen billion. That’s for each of the first five years as we ramp up production then after that, who knows? I have a detailed report that you can view later. ” 

Mark James had achieved almost every goal he had set himself. He was a global sensation, the boy from Newcastle who left school at sixteen without a penny to his name, dyslexic, dyspraxic but also the ability to problem solve like no other. He saw solutions where others saw only problems, he took companies on the brink of collapse and turned them into brand leaders but even he never thought he would become one of the richest people on the planet. Now in his early sixties, he had only one ambition left to stand above Gates,  Musk, Bezos and the rest of them who had built empires based on inherited wealth.  He wanted to be number one, the richest man in the world.

Mark had another unerring ability. He could smell a “But” coming a mile away. 

He taped his glass again. “David, your before photograph was in colour the after one is in black and white. Why? So let’s get to the “But”. Is there a side effect or problem that will impact us, if there is I want to know it, now. “

David could feel his blood pressure rising. 

“When we started to test this on our Control Group we knew from our test on mice that it would affect the body metabolic rate and would speed up the rate it consumed fat and would make an ideal slimming tablet, what we didn’t realise is that it also impacted on the bodies ability to turn fat into muscle. Each person in the CG was given an exercise regime, nothing too strenuous and slowly building over the six-month trial. We quickly saw how muscle tone was improving at a rate we had never seen before, the liver and kidney function that in many of our CG was in a poor state had almost completely restored to full health, diabetes had disappeared and circulation improved fantastically. Even blocked or clogged arteries had miraculously been cleared. Our doctors were astonished, these sorts of recovery rates are unheard of. This drug will revolutionise public health and save a fortune in public health care costs. 

Mark banged his fist down on the table. “BUT BUT BUT”

David cleared his throat and the after picture of the three people returned to the screen this time  it was in colour, “As you can see from this photograph the drug turns the skin a light blue colour.” 

There was a very audible gasp around the table as all eyes turned to Mark but before he could speak John Turnbull the group's chief financial officer stood up. 

“Why the hell have you wasted our time on this nonsense? No one is going to buy a drug, no matter how good, if it turns them blue,” 

Mark raised his arm. “John please sit down for a moment.” He turned to David “Is the effect temporary or permanent? Can we re-jig the formula so that it has all the good qualities but just not the blue bit?” 

Mark was desperate to find a solution as he knew if this could work he wouldn’t just be one of the wealthiest people on the planet he would be the richest.

“The drug acts at a DNA level.” David continued. “It restructures the body's defence systems to repair the liver and kidney functions and to repress the appetite which leads to overeating. As a by-product, it generates a new type of hormone that has all the effects I have described but also turns the skin blue. We have tried everything we can to stop the skin discolouration but if you take out that one step none of it works. If it helps the skin might be a light blue colour but it feels fabulous. After six months there is no need for further treatment and the benefits seem to be permanent.”

Mark stared at the screen for what seemed like a long time, the whole room was waiting for him to speak.

John grunted and turned and looked at him. “I have known David a long time and I know he has an ace up his sleeve or he wouldn’t be standing there with that smug look. Give him a minute.”

David took a deep breath “ I don’t want a minute. I’m going to hand it to Lucy Arthurs”

Lucy was not the normal power-dressing, corporate career person, she was in her early fifties and had close-cropped hair and no makeup but she knew people especially people like Mark. She knew if she didn’t win Mark all would be lost but she knew exactly what to do.

She began “Marketing resulted in young people carrying around bottles of water because they believe they needed to sip it five times an hour. It’s marketing that has persuaded millions of women that filler in their lips makes them look like someone had punched them in the face, is a great look, it’s marketing that got men to go from a yearly bottle of Lynx’s Africa aftershave to using a range of skin products that will make no difference to them at all. 

We have persuaded a whole generation to pay fortunes to advertise our brand names on t-shirts, handbags and baseball caps. Convincing them that blue skin is cool is as easy as selling the idea that hydrogenated vegetable oil tastes like butter. I have a marketing campaign that will have the obese queuing up for hours to get the pill that makes them look like gods even if it is a blue-skinned one.

Mark nodded his head in approval. Everyone looked thrilled except John Turnbull. He remained stony-faced.

Mark. “Lucy this campaign better be good, give me bullet points.”

A new chart flashed up on the screen. 

Lucy knew she had Mark, she just needed to get the rest on her side, especially John. She knew Mark listened to him. He was the financial whizzkid whose understanding of the money markets had driven the acquisitions that had driven the company profits into billions.  

“We start with the low-level influencers.” She continued “ These greedy bastards would sell their own mothers for a foothold in our marketing budget. Then we move on to the celebs and TV personalities., Here we have some ideas for our stealth marketing.” She turned to the screen and was about to go on.

“Stop.” John Turnbull stood up again and looked across the table at Mark. “We need to stop this meeting and I need to talk to you, now!” Mark scowled at him but he had enough respect for John to realise something was seriously wrong.

“OK, everyone, let's take a break and return in fifteen minutes. There’s coffee in the next room. No talking about what we have been discussing in front of anyone else. Remember this is hush-hush.” Once everyone was out of the room he turned to John. “Ok John, what’s it all about?” 

John was shaking, his face pale. “Mark, this is a disaster. Our business model on the pharmaceutical side is built around a very specific fact. More and more people are living longer and nearly all of them need long-term medication. They take daily doses of statins to control cholesterol levels, a combination of drugs to lower blood pressure, drugs to thin their blood to prevent strokes and so many more. We make them all and they drive our cash flow, they drive our profits and they drive our expansion plans. We get massive loans from the banks and we repay them from that guaranteed income. If this drug becomes commonly used and it has the effect they are predicting we will lose that all. This Alpha pill cures people. Once they find a way to stop the blue thing and I know they will, then every health service, every government will want it but once it has gone out into the general population.”

Mark placed his hand on John’s arm. “I see it too and you are right my friend, you’re right. I know what to do.”

That night a specialist cleaning firm took over the laboratory that had developed the Alpha Pill. They took away the computers, files, specimens and anything else associated with the project, all stocks of the drug were destroyed. All the staff were redeployed and signed Non-Disclosure Agreements and in return, they got a large cash payout. 

Lucy and David resigned and Mark paid them both a bonus of £5 million each for their signature on the NDA and their silence. After all, they were the only ones who knew everything about the Alpha Pill.

On the terrace of their villa on a rocky outcrop looking down on the crystal clear water below Skiathos in Greece. David raised his glass of wine. “Here’s to us Lucy.  You saved our skins. As soon as we knew that the Alpha Pill was useless I was desperate.”

Lucy looked out at their infinity pool that over looked the bay. “I was worried for a moment but as soon as I realised John Turnbull had bought it. I knew we were home and dry. It was a disaster wasn’t it,  turning your skin blue was the only thing it was any good at.”

David nodded “The company had invested millions in the project and as we were the driving force behind it, we would have been out on the street in the time it takes to say “clinically obese” but you, you bloody genius, came up with this amazing plan. How did you come up with it?” 

Lucy smiled.  “You know science, I know people and in the end It’s all just marketing David, just marketing and now instead of looking for a job we are £10 million pounds richer” They both burst out laughing.