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TechnoratiPay No Attention to That Clinical Data or Squandered Tax Payer Dollars for Medicaid Drugs
"The American Heart Association is cautioning patients if they stop taking Vytorin abruptly, Schering-Plough and Merck's stock price will fall."
That's how a cartoon showing a news anchor would read after revelations that the American Heart Association--which receives nearly $2 million a year from Vytorin makers Merck and Schering-Plough--and the American College of Cardiology told patients to stay on the drug despite a recent damning study.
Cholesterol drug, Vytorin was hyped as treating "cholesterol from two sources: food and family" but found to work no better than lower priced Zocor in the Enhance clinical study whose results were released in January.
Merck and Schering-Plough have pulled Vytorin ads, prescriptions are down 22 percent and federal and state law makers are asking What-did-they-know-and-when-did-they-know-it? questions of the pharma giants.
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which requisitioned the study results, and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee now want to know if an outside panel Merck and Schering-Plough convened which changed the "end points" or purpose of the study to finesse the bad results is guilty of manipulating data and whether the Enhance study had a data safety monitoring board.
Dingell and Stupak also want to know more about the Merck and Schering-Plough-funded, $350,000 "cholesterol page" on the American Heart Association web site.
Months before the HRT-implicating Women's Health Initiative (WHI), the American Heart Association ran an article paid for by Wyeth-Ayerst Research in its journal Circulation that said hormone therapy had "no significant effect on the risk for stroke among postmenopausal women with coronary disease."
They've also requested the amount of Medicare and Medicaid dollars spent on Vytorin since April 2006, arousing memories of the overpriced and over prescribed to the elderly drug, Vioxx.
The state of New York, for example, spent $21 million for Medicaid prescriptions for Vytorin in the last two years--it costs $3 a pill compared with 3 cents a pill for Zocor--prompting New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to also launch an investigation.
"Drug companies are on notice that concealing critical information about life-saving prescription drugs, profiting at the expense of patients' health, and wasting taxpayer dollars, is simply unacceptable," said Cuomo.
Cuomo also has questions about why Carrie Smith Cox, a Schering-Plough executive vice president, sold 900,000 company shares for $28 million on April 20, according to an SEC filing.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also reviewing the Enhance study--who remembers when FDA was the first not last responder?--though it's not advising doctors to stop prescribing the drug because of the clinical belly flop.
Similarly, many doctors the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette interviewed said they were keeping patients on Vytorin despite being "inundated" with calls from patients asking if they should continue. The data are not all in yet, they say.
But on the industry site cafepharma.com, an anonymous drug salesman met a different reception from a doctor he calls on.
"Got my ass chewed about if I knew... when was I going to give him the head's up ... he looks like an ass in front of his patients," posts the drug rep days after the Enhance study results hit.
"I just nodded and said that I got the information just about the same time he did and that I'm heartsick over it. LDL lowering more than Zocor!! I got thrown out."
One patient in Little Rock came out and asked his doctor the question that must be on many Vytorin takers' minds. "[I]f they say that 'It's not doing any good,' then why take it ?" Ronald Hesselschwerdt, 74, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
We don't know if the doctor answered the stock price will fall if you don't.
Martha Rosenberg is a cartoonist for the Evanston Roundtable in Evanston, Illinois.
14 Comments so far
Show AllLet me tell you when you get on senior meds list, you medication chart will read like every other senior. There is a pill for everything and the more money you have the longer the list will be. It is your job to be familiar with any medication you take and you should ask a lot of questions. A lot of people recognize the problems with medication long before they are recalled. I pity the old people in corporate operated care facilities that are totally druged out taking one pill for this and another one for the side effects of the other. It is a racket and has little or nothing to do with health or well being.
To add insult to injury...Congress (with the blessing of the insurance and pharma industry-controlled AARP) gave big pharma a license to steal when they passed the Medicare Drug legislation in 2004. That legislation prohibits the US Gov. from negotiatiing drug prices with big pharma.
Gotta love corporate welfare.
Drug companies should be to make every scrap of information public when they seek FDA approval. They are protected by the patent issue by the people through the government, therefore they should have no secrets.
Hippie-radical "Investigative Satirist" Paul Krassner was once asked the secret of his longevity (he's in his seventies now) and he replied "I don't take legal drugs." I used to be like that, but as you get along in years and begin to feel the Grim Ripper nibbling at your inner MP3s, it becomes more and more difficult say no to pills that seem to actually relieve symptoms. Ah sweet misery of youth.
NO PRESCRIPTION DRUGS [duh]! I beat malignant melonoma without 'em, you?
There is NO proof that cholesterol has adverse health effects. All of this is just AMA and drug companies making money off of American ignorance and love of taking medications. Before I left the U.S. my doctor told me my cholesterol was to high and I needed to take drugs to bring it down. I looked at the side effects of the drugs and told him to go to hell. U.S. doctors prescribe drugs because it makes money for them, end of story.
The Fat Police, are on the loose,,,,the fat-O-meter, at Mickey-D's says No Fries for you you fat ass, look at you! with your stretch pants you look like a bag of smased apples, wake up and don't smell anything for a month.
The Number one source of Cholesterol?
Isn't that McDonalds ?
What we need is a drug that will help us break our TV addiction. Just kidding.
Corporations and investors should fail if their products are deficient or harmful. Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is not a workable solution.
We're a nation of the overweight, obese couch potatoes looking for the easy fix when our lifestyle causes high colesteral, heart problems, diabetes, and all the rest. Then we can pick and chose from the dumb box which drug to tell our doctors we want to have to fix those problems.
If we threw out the dumb box, ate right and exercised, the majority of us wouldn't need the drugs, and that would solve a lot of problems.
The problem dlnelson7 with asking your Doctor all those questions is: he doesnt know. His time is spent putting patients through his office one-per-15 minutes and he relies on the drug reps to keep him informed and to make sure he knows about the trip to Hawaii the company is paying for. That, I admit, is a broad brush I paint doctors with and there are exceptions of course but it describes the majority.
You'll like your FDA a lot better with appointments and guidance from Obama than you've liked it under Bush, or even Bill Clinton. In America, we really don't have to be run over by our drug industry. It's our choice.
Elections have consequences. Create one.
Whenever a doctor prescribes something grill him.
1. What studies were done.
2. What were the parameters.
3. What other drugs (possibly older) could do the same thing. (see 1 and 2)
4. Who paid for the studies.
5. What have been the negative/positive reports on this drug.
If s/he can't answer ask why s/he is prescribing it?