Work Place Stress

In 2004 the Merck drug company was taken to court for
the class action suit against the drug Vioxx, which was
linked to heart attacks. Merck had to pay
4.85 billion dollars for the settlement.

Unknown to Merck, the Vioxx settlement was not the
end of the drug scandal. Dr. Joseph Ross of the
New York Mount Sinai School of Medicine was alerted
to various other unethical processes involving
drug companies.

Dr Ross has reported that Merck and other drug
companies actually pay money to medical doctors to
place their names on drug companies reports. The drug
companies pay outside medical writers to draft the
reports and then have the doctors sign their names to
the report for a price. No one is saying what price is
needed to get the doctors to sign.

Merck did admit that they do hire so called ghost
writers to draft the reports, but couldn’t see what
harm was done if someone else wrote the report as
long as it is what the doctors claimed.

After more pressure, the drug lawyers went as far
as to state that the report reflect the “opinions” of
the doctors whose name appear on the reports.

Are the lawyers saying that an “opinion” is the same
as having done the actual research which lead to the
end results? The main question is whether the doctors
were involved in the actual testing of the drugs, not
what opinion they have of the drugs.

Everyone has an opinion, but the research and drug
testing are suppose to be based on actual “facts”.

Doctors aren’t saying much about the situation.

The FDA approved a new medication, an inhaled insulin
product called Exubera. There was a marketing
agreement by 2 drugs companies, Nektar and Pfizer
for the product.

The product was on the market for 6 months and it
was not selling. The warning label linked the use of
the drug with lung cancer. It seems the general
public didn’t think the risk of lung cancer was worth
the “convenience” of using an inhaler.

Pfizer pulled out of the agreement to market the
product. You would think no one would be part of
a drug that was linked to causing cancer, but these
were drug companies who run things differently. A
cancer link would be a good reason to want out of
the agreement but that isn’t the reason Pfizer wanted
out. The product wasn’t on track to make
enough money.

The big question should be why did the FDA allow this
product to be placed on the market? Of course the
FDA did require the warning label placed on the
product packaging. This is sufficient proof of how the
FDA is monitoring the safety of drugs for the market
place. I wonder who is monitoring the people at the
FDA? Better question is why do people at the FDA
think the risk of lung cancer is
not a public health danger?

Then think twice about a product that has been FDA
approved when a doctor tells you “the drug is safe,
it is FDA approved”. You know the government
department, FDA that was given the power to monitor
market place products to protect the public’s health.
READ IT AGAIN if you have any doubts about where
the drug companies values are.

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Drug companies earn “Big Bucks” from their TV
commercials. It is estimated that drug companies
spend 5billion dollars a year on advertisements.

To generate the maximum revenue from commercials,
only “brand name” drugs are promoted.These drugs
are patented so no other company can market them,
thus the company owning the patent can charge high
prices. After seven years the patent will expire, at
which ime the company add an insignificant ingredient
and reapply for another patent for the so called “new
and improved drug”. There is public pressure to force
the drug companies to prove that the “new and
improved drug” actually has significant benefits over
the previous version before patenting.

All drugs have the same basic chemical make up,
commonly referred to as the generic formula.
Drug companies make brand name drugs by adding
other ingredients to the generic formula and
patenting the new drug as a brand name drug,
charging more to the consumer. Many health i
nsurance plans list both the generic and the brand
name for the same drug: however the use of the
generic is preferred due to the lower cost.

In 2007 Schering-Plough paid 90 million dollars to drug
manufactures to delay production of a generic version
of a blood pressure medication. When taken to court,
the drug company was able to justify this cost by a
loophole in the law.

Drugs companies aren’t taking lightly this
encroachment on their pricing power control The
newest tactic is to combine 2 commonly used drugs
into one pill, thus avoiding the generic formula. You
can still buy each separate drug and take each pill
separately. The drug company is counting on the
convenience of dealing with only one instead of two
separate drugs, as today’s modern person is all about
convenience even if it cost more.