NYT,pg1: Medicine Fueled by Marketing Intensified Trouble for Pain Pills

[DeepModem Mom]

Medicine Fueled by Marketing Intensified Trouble for Pain Pills
By BARRY MEIER
Published: December 19, 2004
This article was reported by Barry Meier, Gina Kolata and Andrew Pollack and written by Mr. Meier.


....the story of the COX-2 drugs, a class that includes another troubled Pfizer medication, Bextra, is part of an age-old search for safer pain treatments. And some doctors say that they have helped. But it is also perhaps the clearest instance yet of how the confluence of medicine and marketing can turn hope into hype - and how difficult it is for the Food and Drug Administration to monitor the safety of drugs after they have been approved for the market. Celebrex and Vioxx, after fast-track approval from the F.D.A., hit the nation's pharmacies as revolutionary drugs that could not only treat arthritis patients' pain, but potentially save their lives.

But having spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop their drugs, the makers of Celebrex and Vioxx, cheered on by Wall Street, had every motivation to expand their markets beyond the older people most at risk of ulcers to encourage the drugs' use by millions more people of all ages. That was so even as, at least in the case of Vioxx, there was evidence as early as 2000 that a COX-2 drug could cause heart problems....

***

Since the drugs' release, the companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on television, newspaper and magazine advertising for them and, by some estimates, at least as much on marketing and promoting the drugs to doctors. As a result, many medical experts now say that Celebrex and Vioxx, selling for $2 or $3 a pill, have been too widely prescribed to patients who could safely obtain the same pain benefits from over-the-counter drugs costing pennies apiece....

***

....the rapid rise and now shaky future of this class of drugs, some researchers say, is emblematic of the way drug companies' efforts to spur the use of costly new medicines can distort the medical realities of safety and effectiveness....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/business/19drug.html

[Pachamama]

1. My policy is that any drug that needs to be "advertised" one should be

wary of.... :scared:

[Robbien]

2. US Drug companies do not want us to buy foreign drugs

because the foreign drugs are not approved by the FDA. What bunk! As this article clearly points out, FDA approval means diddlysquat.

[ClintonTyree]

3. The FDA is a wholly owned subsidiary of ......................

the large Pharmaceutical Companies anyway. THEY fund the follow up after market investigations. THEY are the largest contributors to Congressmen who oversee the FDA's practices.
The Fox is guarding the hen-house. There's no wonder why these lethal drugs are allowed to be sold months or even years after they've been proven to be harmful to the public. The FDA is in the Pharms back pockets.
Of course our great resident continues to put forth the myth that foreign drugs are MUCH too dangerous to import at cheaper prices. Meanwhile, our own "medicinal watchdog", the FDA, does NOTHING to protect us from the predatory practices of the giant Pharms at home. You can't bite the hand that feeds you, right?

[annabanana]

4. I think the Marketers should join in the liability

If they're making buckets of money advertising faulty and dangerous drugs, coercing and manipulating on the drug dealer's behalf.. they are just drug pushers themselves.

.....oh,.... and get some regulations in place on the runaway insurance industry while we're at it.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Drugs?? We don't need no steenking drugs.... or at least I don't.

There are safe alternatives to just about all the snake oil that the pharmcos hawk. Books have been written on the subject... by college trained, decades seasoned medical personell. The real question is, why isn't the public healthcare system informing people of these facts?

They are tools as well. Tools to a system that has been designed to pull the pharmaceutical grade wool over the eyes of the many and enslave them to chemical fixes for something that has nothing to do with chemicals. Pity the fool who would try to put me on a med for this or that. Ain't gonna happen. Not ever.

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