The
blockbuster pill profit party is over for Big Pharma. Bestselling pills
like Lipitor, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singular and Concerta have gone off
patent and sites which their ads sustained are withering on the vine.
WebMD, for example, the voice of Pharma on the Web, with a former
in December.
But
don’t worry, Wall Street. Pharma isn’t going to deliver disappointing
earnings just because it has little or no new drugs coming online and
has failed at the very reason for its existence. Here are six new Pharma
marketing initiatives that are guaranteed to keep investor expectations
high along with our insurance premiums. The secret? Recycling old and
discredited drugs and marketing diseases to sell the few new ones.
diagnosed
with ADHD, it’s looking for new markets for the drugs. One new use for
Ritalin (methylphenidate), the grandfather of ADHD drugs, could be for
eating disorders
.Researchers
say a woman who suffered from bulimia nervosa, bipolar I disorder,
cocaine and alcohol dependence, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
and panic disorder
(>1 year) remission” when methylphenidate was added to her other drugs.
Then there’s pregnant women. A new paper suggests that taking away a women’s methylphenidate during pregnancy may
and
that, “In all cases, children developed normally and no adverse effects
were reported,” though they were exposed in utero. Yes, kids can be
given ADHD meds at even younger ages–as fetuses.
Pharma
is also looking at the elderly as a new market for ADHD drugs.
Methylphenidate may “improve gait function in older adults,”
researchers wrote recently. And a major clinical trial sponsored by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is
underway to
see if methylphenidate can reduce apathy in Alzheimer patients. Of
course many Alzheimer patients don’t have apathy but agitation and
aggression; they will be excluded.
2) Male Hormone Replacement
Women
over 40 might feel a rush of medical justice over the big push to treat
men’s “Low T,” a recent “disease” now aggressively marketed, with
replacement testosterone. For over 50 years, medical journals were
relentless in telling women they were “outliving their ovaries” (a real
ad) and the only hope to keep their looks, their husbands and their
sanity was hormone replacement. Now men are hearing that their decreased
sex drive and energy, reduced muscle and growing fat put them in the
same position. Missing in both marketing campaigns is the fact that
people don’t get old because they lose hormones; they lose hormones
because they get old.
Many testosterone replacement products have been
approved by the FDA from
pills, injections and patches to gels and solutions that are applied
topically. In November, the first underarm testosterone replacement
product was approved which is applied like deodorant.
The male HRT products are not without their
risks. They can
worsen benign prostate problems, heart
failure, sleep apnea, cause liver toxicity and possibly stimulate
prostate cancer though it remains a theoretical risk. Injected
testosterone has been
associated with embolisms and extreme allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) both of which can be fatal. Men who take
Propecia for
hair loss can especially have low testosterone, which may not be
reversible, because it reduces an enzyme involved in testosterone
synthesis.
3) Calling Alcoholics and Addicts Mentally Ill and In Need of Vaccines
One
of the few good things about alcoholism and drug addiction is they can
be treated for free. Twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous use
peer support instead of drugs, trained personnel or insurance — and they
work. It’s no surprise that the millions of people recovering without
Pharma’s help are its latest target as it tries to shore up revenues.
Pharma is increasingly pressuring rehab facilities and doctors to add
a mental illness diagnoses to recovering patients to sell expensive
pills. Ka-ching!
Worse,
Nora Volkow, the
head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is conducting cruel
experiments on primates to develop a vaccine for alcoholic or
addicts. Is there an alcoholic or addict in the world who would take
such a vaccine? Doesn’t she know that drinking and drugging are fun
(until they aren’t) and that no one wants to quit before the party’s
over? Doesn’t she know that when drinking and drugging cease to be fun, a
thing called denial kicks in and alcoholics and addict still won’t take
her vaccine?
These alcoholic/addict vaccines will be marketed for
people “at risk” of addiction on the basis of their family histories
and brain scans which sounds a little, well, non-voluntary. Marketing
early aggressive treatment for diseases people don’t even have yet
(“pre-osteoporosis,” “pre-diabetes,” “pre-asthma” and “pre” mental
illness) is a foolproof business model for Pharma because people will
never know if they even needed the drugs–or need them now.
4) Pathologizing Insomnia
Insomnia
has been a goldmine to Big Pharma. To goose the insomnia market, Pharma
has created subcategories of insomnia — chronic, acute, transient,
initial, delayed-onset and middle-of-the-night as well as early-morning
wakening non-restful sleep. Your insomnia is as unique as you are! It is
also no coincidence that “wakefulness” medications cause insomnia and
insomnia drugs, because of their hangover, create a market
for wakefulness drugs.
Now Pharma is announcing that insomnia is actually a
“risk”
factor for
depression and
“that treating insomnia can help treat depression.” The American
Psychiatric Association’s new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5)
due in May also newly pathologizes sleep. Considered the Bible of
psychiatric drug treatments that end up being funded by insurers, the
latest DSM has revised the way insomnia is diagnosed and classified. “If
sleep disturbance is persistent and impairs daytime functioning, then
it should be recognized and treated,” write authors in a paper in the
December issue of the
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
5) ”Selling” Chronic Immune Disorders
Rheumatoid
arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and plaque
psoriasis are rare disorders, but you wouldn’t know it from Pharma’s
latest marketing efforts. The autoimmune conditions are increasingly
treated with genetically engineered, injected drugs like Humira,
Remicide, Enbrel and Cimzia which can make Pharma $20,000 per year per
patient. No wonder a recent ad campaign tries to convince people with
back pain “that doesn’t go away” that they really have ankylosing
spondylitis. No wonder “RA” (rheumatoid arthritis) ads are everywhere
and ads for plaque psoriasis drugs promise
“clearer skin” like
beauty creams. In Chicago, ads for the expensive, injected drugs have
appeared in college newspapers, as if they are for the general
population instead of people with uncommon diseases.
Because such
drugs, called TNF blockers, suppress the immune system, they invite
super bacterial and fungal infections, herpes and rare cancers, the
latter especially in children. They are linked to increasing
hospitalizations, extreme allergic reactions and cardiovascular events,
all of which
Pharma tries to downplay. TNF
blockers are also marketed for thinning bones and asthma, conditions
that would rarely warrant their risks. Xolair, marketed for asthma
despite its
FDA warnings. has recently gotten buzz as a great treatment for
chronic itch.
6) Recycling Neurontin
The seizure drug Neurontin (gabapentin) has not been Pharma’s finest hour. A division of Pfizer Inc.,
pleaded guilty in
2008 to illegally promoting it for bipolar disorder, pain, migraine
headaches, and drug and alcohol withdrawal when it was only approved for
postherpetic neuralgia, pain after shingles and epilepsy, paying $430
million. Oops. Pfizer actually promoted the illegal uses while under
probation for illegal activities related to Lipitor and later promoted
illegal uses for a similar drug, Lyrica, while under the Neurontin
agreement! See: incorrigible.
To sell Neurontin, Pfizer’s
Parke-Davis launched an elaborate “publication plan” to get marketing
papers disguised as science in medical journals. In just three years,
Parke-Davis planted
13 ghostwritten articles in medical journals promoting off-label uses for Neurontin including a supplement to the prestigious
Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine that Parke-Davis made into 43,000 reprints for its reps to disseminate. See Doc, it says right here….
And
there was more duplicity. In 2011, three years after its $430 million
settlement, Pfizer’s STEPS trial (“Study of Neurontin: Titrate to
Effect, Profile of Safety”)
was reported to also be
a con and not a scientific study; it was a sales tool created to
inspire the 772 investigators participating in the trail to personally
prescribe Neurontin. Recently, the new uses of Neurontin for
chronic cough, menopause and
insomnia are appearing in scientific literature. Why does no one seem to believe them?
No comments:
Post a Comment