Generics and pharmaceutical cos

[Guest guest]

At 10:40 AM 05/12/2002 -0700, catzrus2@... wrote:

>It seems that the patent on Claritin is about to expire and by fall other

>companies will be able to start offering it cheaper and maybe eventually

>OTC! To fight the loss of millions of dollars in overpriced (IMHO) drug

>sales, the company invented new " Clarinex " , which will, of course, be

>expensive.

Same thing happened last summer with Prozac. Went generic in August, but

the company had already come out with a " new " medication purportedly

intended for " premenstrual dysphoric disorder, " or PMDD, called

Sarafem. Sarafem IS Prozac, fluoxetine hydrochloride. There is no

chemical difference. It's a blatant way for the pharmaceutical company, in

this case Eli Lilly, to keep Prozac on the market and safe from

generic-drug laws for another 12 years.

Sure, these medications help people. But if you look at the history of

most successful medications in the past ten years, you see a combination of

medical advancement and outright greed. These meds are major cash cows for

companies, which doesn't mitigate their overall effectiveness but which

does place a question mark alongside the marketing efforts and legal narrow

squeaks that take place all the time. No company wants their drug to go

generic. There goes the money. So they'll go a long way to ensure their

profit margins stay intact. Marketing the same drug under a different

name? Doesn't that sound rather like bilking the public? But we don't

make them stop -- not that I think that would be an easy task, don't get me

wrong. If they market the same drug for a different purpose under a

different name, who can blow the whistle?

The question that frightens me is that of overprescribing without knowing

it. If a patient is on Prozac and sees her gynecologist about PMS, is she

meticulous about saying she's already on fluoxetine hydrochloride? Does

she know that Prozac and Sarafem are identical? Does her doctor? What if

she is mistakenly put on both prescriptions simulataneously? I'm not sure

this will happen, but fact is, it could. And double dose of Prozac would

be -- well. Not necessarily a good thing.

Of course hopefully her pharmacist catches the gaffe before it goes that

far. Always the best resource. Well, that, and your own education. These

days it's HARD to know what you're taking without doing a lot of research,

asking a lot of questions, and keeping records of what you've taken, what

you're taking, and any interactions or reactions that you've noted. I

think it has the potential to do some serious harm, if we the consumers

aren't very careful. Not a single non-psychiatric doctor I've ever asked

(only about 5) has known that Sarafem and Prozac were the same.

Kinda scary.

Em

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

" Even in nice Mr. son's stories, each boy's life only catches

your deepest interest when a pirate is about to slit that sweet child's

throat. What makes a story good ain't what makes a person good. "

(Allan Gurganus)

" Cut a good story anywhere, and it will bleed. "

(Anton Chekhov)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~