How Big Pharma sells us drugs we don't need or that don't work.

[pnwmom]

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/sleep-advertising/

One evening in the late summer of 2015, Lisa Schwartz was watching television at her Vermont home when an ad for a sleeping pill called Belsomra appeared on the screen. Schwartz, a longtime professor at Dartmouth Medical College, usually muted commercials, but she watched this one closely: a 90-second spot featuring a young woman and two slightly cute, slightly creepy fuzzy animals in the shape of the words “sleep” and “wake.”

Schwartz had a reason to be curious about this particular ad. Two years earlier, she had been a member of the advisory panel that reviewed Belsomra for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—and the process had not gone well for the manufacturer, Merck. The company saw its new drug as a major innovation, emphasizing that the medication acted on an entirely different mechanism within the brain than the previous generation of insomnia medicines like Ambien and Lunesta. During the drug’s development, Merck had suggested that it could treat insomnia more effectively and produce fewer side effects than existing medications. In 2012, one Merck scientist described the science underlying Belsomra as a “sea change.”

But when Schwartz and her colleagues scrutinized data from the company’s own large-scale clinical trials, what they found was a lot less impressive. People taking Belsomra fell asleep, on average, only six minutes sooner than people taking a placebo and stayed asleep for a mere 16 minutes longer. Some test subjects experienced worrying side effects, like next-day drowsiness and temporary paralysis upon waking. For a number of people, these effects were so severe that the researchers halted their driving tests, fearing someone would get into an accident. Because of these safety concerns, the FDA ended up approving the drug at a lower starting dosage than the company had requested—a dosage so low that a Merck scientist admitted it was “ineffective.”

So when Schwartz saw the Belsomra ad, she was struck by how smoothly it sidestepped the drug’s limitations. A soothing voiceover hypes the science, giving a sophisticated explanation of how Belsomra targets a neurotransmitter called orexin to turn down the brain’s “wake messages.” “Only Belsomra works this way,” the voice continues. The ad ends with the young woman curling up with the “sleep” animal and falling into a peaceful slumber. “You have no idea watching that ad that we’re talking about falling asleep 6 minutes faster and staying that way an extra 16 minutes—and that’s at higher doses,” Schwartz said. “We really don't have a great idea of how well it works at the lower dose FDA actually recommends for people starting the medication.”

In the United States, commercials like these are simply part of the cultural wallpaper. But just because drug ads are ubiquitous here doesn’t mean they’re a normal way of informing consumers about their medical options. In fact, the U.S. is one of only two developed countries in the world that allow drug companies to advertise their products on television. . . .

SNIP

[meow2u3]

1. Ever notice that every advertised drug is patent protected?

And that those meds cost an arm, a leg, and your firstborn? There's a reason for that: to drive up the cost of prescriptions, even generics.

[angstlessk]

2. My favorite drug was the one that makes your toenails pretty

BUT the side effects could be liver damage and death...but hey, your toenails will be good looking!

[KT2000]

3. I'm laughing here but

it is actually pretty awful that they are allowed to put this on the market.

[angstlessk]

4. Pharma creates problems, then produces pills to fix it

regardless of the outcome

[Archae]

5. I don't trust this article, since the Huffer Post is notorious for peddling woo.

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/11/780-arianna-huffington.html

[pnwmom]

6. Big Pharma is notorious for peddling woo. n/t

[Archae]

7. At times, yes.

When "Big Pharma" is caught, they pay penalties.

As was pointed out so clearly on PBS, when a supplement maker was caught selling contaminated supplements, he simply denied it and to date has never paid one dime in penalties.