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More reasons
why the public should be skeptical – educated and alert - about pharmaceutical
marketing. As I said yesterday,
there is “less cooperative silence” within the health professions about the
cause and effect of mega-marketing and what shows up in the diagnostic codebooks.
Meanwhile patients may have to instigate
change in this Supply & Demand practice. A good patient is proactive, assertive, and inquisitive. – Karen Watters Cole Drugmakers
Deny Inventing a Disorder
Reuters, Saturday, January 4, 2003 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7843-2003Jan3.html Pharmaceutical
companies yesterday rejected a published account claiming they had invented a
new disorder known as female sexual dysfunction to build a market for Viagra
and similar drugs among women. An
article in the British
Medical Journal
said researchers with
close ties to the industry
had defined the new disorder at company-sponsored meetings over the past six
years to encourage
use of the same medicines
that have helped men with impotence. The author of the article, Australian Financial Review journalist
Ray Moynihan, said widely
reported statistics
that 43 percent of women older than 18 had female sexual dysfunction were misleading. He traced the origin of the definition of
the condition to a May 1997 meeting of researchers and drug company
representatives at a Cape Cod hotel. Moynihan said
the 43 percent figure gained prominence when two authors with ties to Viagra's maker, Pfizer
Inc., used it in a
1999 article in the Journal
of the American Medical Association. The figure comes from
a reanalysis of a 1992
survey of 1,500 women,
who were asked whether they had experienced any of seven sexual difficulties
for more than two months during the previous year. The sexual difficulties included a lack of desire for sex,
anxiety about sexual performance and difficulties with lubrication. A Pfizer spokeswoman denied the allegations that the
company invented female sexual dysfunction, saying that Viagra -- and upcoming rival products from Eli Lilly and
Icos, and from Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline -- had yet to be approved for use in
women. Pfizer made $1.5 billion from Viagra in 2001. FDA Approves Prozac for Children, Teens
According to the FDA,
Prozac is the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) to receive approval for treating
depression in children. The
approval was based on two
studies of children and
adolescents with depression, which showed that the drug produced a statistically significant effect compared with placebo. The drug also produced a statistically significant effect compared with placebo in studies
of children and adolescents with OCD. Side effects associated
with Prozac use among children and adolescents were similar to those observed
in adults and included nausea,
tiredness, nervousness, dizziness and difficulty concentrating. The FDA noted that in one of the clinical studies, after 19
weeks of treatment with Prozac, children gained, on average, about 1.1 cm less
in height (about a half an inch) and about one kilogram less in weight (about
two pounds) compared with children treated with a placebo. According to the agency, "the clinical significance of
this observation on long-term growth is unknown." Lilly will conduct a phase IV post-marketing study to further evaluate the potential impact
of Prozac on long-term growth in children. Citing figures from the
National Institute of
Mental Health,
the FDA said depression
affects up to 2.5% of children and
8.3% of adolescents
in the US. OCD affects roughly 2% of the population and typically begins during adolescence or childhood. Indianapolis-based
Lilly lost patent
protection
on Prozac in August 2001. The drug was once a blockbuster, pulling in sales of $2.5 billion in 2000. Since losing
patent protection, several generic formulations of Prozac have flooded the US
market, cutting sharply into Lilly's revenues. Outgoing Mail
Scanned by NAV 2002 |
- [Futurework] How Pharma Took Over Medicine: Research an... eric stewart
- RE: [Futurework] How Pharma Took Over Medicine: Re... Karen Watters Cole
- Re: [Futurework] How Pharma Took Over Medicine... Ray Evans Harrell
- RE: [Futurework] How Pharma Took Over Medicine... Harry Pollard
- Re: [Futurework] How Pharma Took Over Medicine: Re... Ray Evans Harrell
- Re: [Futurework] How Pharma Took Over Medicine... eric stewart
- Karen Watters Cole
