« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »

December 20, 2006

Eye on .. CBS

by Peter Pitts

CBS Reporter Takes Swipe at Drug Industry, Praises Politician in Blog Post
Armen Keteyian lamented 'Big Pharma's' 'control' over Americans.

By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute

“What can be done to break Big Pharma’s growing control of our minds and bodies? I wish I knew,” a critic of the pharmaceutical industry wrote recently on a media blog. But the author of that post was an ostensibly unbiased investigative journalist: CBS correspondent Armen Keteyian.

Network blogs can be a valuable, unfiltered look at reporters’ biases, and Keteyian’s December 14 post to CBS’s “Primary Source” was no exception.

“No matter how you slice it Wednesday was not a great day for the FDA,” Keteyian began his blog post, recounting how the December 13 “Evening News” presented “back-to-back stories” on a new FDA warning label for antidepressants and congressional criticism of FDA’s handling of Ketek, an antibiotic that can result in liver damage to some patients.

While December 13 might not have been FDA’s finest hour for public relations, the CBS reporter failed to account for how his bias could color his perceptions.

Keteyian, a former sportscaster, peppered his blog post with more anti-industry commentary, insisting that “Big Pharma seems in control [of] much of Congress, or at least its legislative agenda” before praising Iowa Republican Charles Grassley as a “straight-talking” senator who has “stood up and called out” pharmaceutical companies.

As the Business & Media Institute documented on December 14, CBS presented a decidedly sensationalistic look at the FDA’s decision to require a “black box” warning on drugs like Paxil and Zoloft when prescribed to patients up to the age of 25. In that December 13 report, Keteyian’s colleague Sharyl Attkisson focused heavily on the grief of distraught widows of suicidal patients while finding no air time for expert medical testimony.

Of course, medical experts such as NBC News’s chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman have noted that many psychiatrists find medication a crucial part of treating depression for some patients, albeit one with risks that require careful monitoring.

That dose of reality is a bitter pill to swallow for Keteyian, who lamented in his blog post that “America is a drug dependant [sic] nation” that takes pills “for just about every illness known to man or woman.”

What's the frequency ... Armen?

Posted by Peter Pitts at 03:12 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack | Permalink

December 12, 2006

Gray Lady on Gray Market

by Peter Pitts

Editorial from today's edition of the New York Times:

Editorial
Fighting Drug Fakes
Published: December 12, 2006

Tempted to buy cheap medicines from a pharmacy Web site? Think twice. If the Web site shows no verifiable street address for the pharmacy, there is a 50 percent chance the drugs are counterfeit.

In rich countries, fake medicines mainly come from virtual stores. Elsewhere, they are on the pharmacy shelves. In much of the former Soviet Union, 20 percent of the drugs on sale are fakes. In parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, 30 percent are counterfeit. The culprits range from mom-and-pop operations processing chalk in their garages to organized-crime networks that buy the complicity of regulators, customs officials and pharmacists.

In Panama, dozens of people died after taking counterfeit drugs made with an industrial solvent. Often counterfeiters put in real ingredients for their smell or taste, but heavily diluted. This has sped the emergence of resistant strains of infections, and is probably a big reason some malaria drugs and antibiotics have lost their power.

Drug counterfeiting can be fought. Five years ago, the majority of Nigeria’s drugs were fakes, and the country was a major source of counterfeits abroad. When the Nigerian government donated 88,000 doses of meningitis vaccine to Niger during an epidemic in 1995, the vaccine turned out to be a fake — causing more than 2,500 children to die.

Now the possibility that a drug is fake in Nigeria has dropped to 17 percent, according to the World Health Organization. The country’s drug control agency is informing people through radio and TV jingles about fake medicines. It has also fired corrupt officials, hired a fleet of inspectors to drop in on pharmacies, banned imports from some 30 companies, and begun prosecuting counterfeiters.

One of the problems Nigeria still faces is that the penalty for counterfeiting medicine is as little as a $70 fine — a small price to pay for a crime that can reap a fortune. All over the developing world, governments treat falsifying medicines as a mere copyright infringement, rather than potential murder.

The W.H.O. has recently set up a task force that brings together many groups that work on counterfeit drugs. It is a start. Multinational drug companies — which have been reluctant to report fakes lest they erode consumer confidence in all drugs — need to do more. An international convention is also needed to establish stiffer penalties for counterfeiting drugs, and marshal more funds and support to fight this deadly crime.

Wonder if Senator Vitter will put a "hold" on his subscription to the Gray Lady?

All the news that's fit to print. Amen.

Posted by Peter Pitts at 04:26 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack | Permalink

December 08, 2006

Pfizer’s Pfineset Hour

by Peter Pitts

When torcetrapib clinical trial results were presented to Pfizer chairman Jeff Kindler, he did not equivocate. Despite the financial implications, the trials were stopped immediately.

Tough choice? Yes. But, more importantly, principled choice.

The principle? Patient safety. And, as my father used to say, it’s not a principle unless it hurts to stand by it.

Bravo.

I must have missed the words of congratulations from the IOM, Senator Grassley, and Sidney Wolfe.

Posted by Peter Pitts at 12:44 PM
Comments (0) | TrackBack | Permalink

December 05, 2006

China Syndrome

by Peter Pitts

"Drug Pirates Leave Death in their Wake." So reads the headline from the Guardian (of London). It's the most recent report of China's role in the growing global threat of counterfeit medicines -- and it's nothing short of international health care terrorism.

Some relevant snippets:

* Last month Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, revealed that fake birth control pills and HIV retroviral drugs from China had been seized by European customs officers.

* According to Mr. Mandelson, half of all counterfeit pharmaceuticals found inthe EU originate in China.

* The article cites the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest report to the effect that that global sales of counterfeit drugs will reach $75bn (£38bn) in 2010 - an increase of more than 90% from 2005.

* Henk Bekedam, representative for WHO in Beijing, said, "Fake drugs are a global problem and there is no reason to believe China is an exception. Piracy is a disease ... we need to report on it, find out where it is coming from, and go and deal with it."

Here's a link to the complete article:

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1963095,00.html

And the closing sentence of the story is worth sharing:

"The worst consequences will be a lot more serious than erectile dysfunction."

Posted by Peter Pitts at 11:44 AM
Comments (0) | TrackBack | Permalink