QDIS Blog

State of the Pharmaceutical Industry

by Ed Vawter @ 12:35 pm. Filed under FDA, Pharma News

The pharmaceutical industry has really kind of taken it on the chin recently. There have been quite a few problems and other issues recently none of which have been positive. Here’s a list of ones I’m aware of.

Baycol: Philadelphia Court OKs Baycol Settlement: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
Vioxx: Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Full Coverage on Yahoo! News
FDA commissioner indicted: Ex-FDA chief faces criminal inquiry - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com
Plan B Fiasco: Decision Process to Deny Initial Application for Over-the-Counter Marketing of the Emergency Contraceptive Drug Plan B Was Unusual
Lack of Biogeneric guidance: PharmaGossip: FDA - federal judge orders action on Omnitrope
Institute of Medicine to report on the FDA: http://www.windhover.com/ezine/pdf/DrugSafety0604.pdf
Problems with the sleeping pill Ambien: ScienceDaily: Doctors wake up to sleeping pill risks
Ketek antibiotic problems for Sanofi-aventis: ScienceDaily: Validity of key clinical trial questioned and US lawmakers question FDA OK of Sanofi antibiotic - Yahoo! News
BMS antibiotic Tequin: Drug Company Taking Tequin Off Market
FTC to subpeona drug companies for paying to keep generics off the market: Generic Drug Payoff Draws Gov’t. Interest and Drug pacts keep some generics off market - FTC - Yahoo! News
Pfizer class action lawsuit regarding Lipitor: Class-Action Lawsuit Challenges Pfizer’s DTC Ad Claim of Lipitor’s Effectiveness in Reducing Cholesterol Levels
DTC Drug Ads Under Fire
UK fraud charges for price fixing: Drug chiefs on price-fixing charges - Health - Times Online
Public Citizen | Congress Watch | Legislation Closing Loopholes in Drug Patent Law Will Help Assure Consumers Access to Lower-Priced Generic Drugs

Drug Safety in General

Then there are several lawsuits of one company suing another such as Ariad vs Eli Lilly and now Ariad vs Amgen (and I’m sure there are others I’m overlooking). While I know the importance of protecting intellectual property rights to Joe Citizen on the street it just look like greedy companies suing each other to try and get rich.

There have been a couple of positive things recently. The voluntary holding off of direct-to-consumer advertising may be increasing consumer. Opinion: It’s All Relative - PhRMA’s new voluntary guidelines are about much more than DTC advertising—and they’re not really voluntary. - PharmExec

Another positive has been making public clinical trials results. Clinicaltrials2005.pdf

Now neither of these were done without some arm twisting so they don’t do much to improve consumer confidence, but they are steps in the right direction. I always believe in doing the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way (this includes at the right time), and if any of those three are missing, there will be problems.

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