A biotech industry party featured nude or partially nude female dancers, BioCentury reports. Some of the dancers, it adds, were emblazoned with companies' logos.
The Party at Bio Not Associated with Bio is known for its "over-the-top themes," Stat News adds, but Kate Strayer-Benton, the director of strategy at Momenta Pharmaceuticals, tells it she was shocked when she saw the entertainment at this year's party. "It felt like a line had so obviously been crossed," Strayer-Benton, added. "Objectifying women — in this case, even physically branding them with sponsorship of companies in our industry — it just felt so wrong."
Though the party was not associated with BIO — as its name indicates — BIO chair and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals CEO John Maraganore tells Biocentury this is unacceptable and that he believes the party's sponsors and organizers should not be part of BIO.
BioCentury adds that a number of the sponsors of the event said they didn't know about the entertainment or how their logos would be used. "We just can't have our name associated with such disgusting objectification of women," Alpha Blue Ocean CEO Pierre Vannineuse tells Stat News.
This, BioCentury notes, comes two and a half years after a party held by LifeSci Advisors at the same time as the JP Morgan conference hired models in short dresses to mingle among guests.