HealthDot Pharma Report: Medicine, Booze, Hallucinogenic Reactions and More
Transcript
Greetings and welcome. I’m Michael Cervieri and this is the Healthdot Pharma Report. Today’s report is brought to you by KnowledgeSource, a leading provider of Health Care business information and analysis services for executives.
Today’s report follows a pharmaceutical bender: We look at bong-like delivery systems, the tangled road of medicine and booze, hallucinogenic drug reactions and a Vatican dispute over sexy time.
WE DIDN’T INHALE
Diabetes is on the rise in the United States and pharmaceutical companies are looking for fancy new ways to package and sell their drugs.
The drug is generally insulin. And generally it’s injected. But insulin is generic so the money is in coming up with clever ways to administer insulin and monitor blood sugar levels.
For example, the Omnipod pumps insulin from a device that looks like a smartphone; Mediacom has an tester that looks like a pen: Medtronic has a pump that looks like a pager, and the Glucophone analyzes a pinpricked blood sample and sends the data to your doctor.
Enter Pfizer. They’ve got a new product too. It’s called Exubera. And you don’t give yourself a shot. Instead. You inhale.
When created, Pfizer predicted the device would be so popular that they expected $2 billion in by 2010.
Unfortunately for them, they seem to have overlooked a few key points: Only ten percent of inhaled insulin actually makes it into the bloodstream so you need larger quantities and a bigger delivery device.
This lead to a design snafu. Consumers complained that the device was cumbersome and embarassing to use in public. Why? Because it looks like a bong.
Final result: The Exubera didn’t sell. As industry analyst Mike Krensavage of Raymond James & Associates noted, “This is one of the most stunning failures in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.”
Pfizer stands to lose $2.8 billion.
SLEEPING TROUBLE
Sleeping pills are a $4.5 billion business, but do they really make you sleep more?
According to a study published the National Institute of Health, sleeping pills get you to sleep 7-16 minutes faster than a placebo, and help you sleep 11 - 19 minutes longer.
For those caught in an insomnia haze, every minute counts, but with such small results, why are sleeping pills so popular?
The NIH study shows that the pills actually reduce anxiety, so that people don’t worry about trying to get to sleep. They also create a condition called anterograde amnesia, so that if you do toss and turn, you won’t really remember it. Clever stuff.
But while a little amnesia in the service of extra shut-eye might be fine, Rosemary Eckley awoke one morning with a broken wrist. She fell while sleepwalking after taking ambien and didn’t remember a thing.
Some might remember that twenty years ago authorities had to withdraw the drug Halcion: It seems that airline passengers trying to sleep through a flight would wake up at their destination with no clue how they got there, or even where they were.
With this in mind, Cehpalon’s sleep disorder drug Provigil will start carrying warnings that in rare cases it might cause rashes, anxiety, mania, hallucinations, and suicidal thoughts.
And in some very rare cases, the popular sleeping drug Trazodone has been linked to Priapism - which means prolonged and painful erections which will not go away. Try sleeping through that.
BAD MEDICINE
BUST IN ST. LOUIS
Back in 2000, the FDA discovered that the General Theraputics Corporation in St. Louis was manufacturing unsanitary medicines, and ordered them to cease and desist.
Fast forward to September of this year, inspectors got a tip that General Theraputics is still at it. The FDA raided the facility, broke through a false wall and found several secret rooms full of all kinds of nasties, including roof leaks, water damage, dead cockroaches and mouse droppings near equipment, containers of Vitrin infested with beetles, and deteriorating chemicals that were potentially explosive.
The building was evacuated, the drugs seized, and legal proceedings are… proceeding.
WHISTLE-BLOWER
Meanwhile, in Seattle, James Marchese was fired from his job at Cell Theraputics.
Marchese and wasn’t happy about it, so he told the Justice Department that his former employer had illegally marketed a cancer drug called Trisenox and bilked millions from Medicare.
The company agreed to settle the charges by paying the government $10.5 million, of which Mr. Marchese was entitled, as a reward for his whistleblowing, to receive a quarter - that’s $2.8 million.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank: Marchese’s ex-girlfriend testified that Marchese masterminded the Medicare fraud in the first place, and destroyed documents that implicated him. It seems he also wrote a manuscript that documents his adventures at Cell Theraputics, but Marchese calls it “a crude attempt at fiction”, and said he was shocked that a federal judge might withhold his whistle-blower reward.
“If not for me,” he said, “they wouldn’t even have a case.”
TAMIFLU KILLS CHILDREN
Governments around the world are stockpiling Tamiflu in case of a lethal worldwide outbreak of the flu. But the FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee is meeting to discuss some disturbing side effects in children- hallucinations, self-injury, and suicides: at least a dozen Japanese children have died since 2005. Drugmaker Roche insists that the side effects are caused by the flu, not their meds.
TRASYLDOL BLOODBATH
Even more harrowing is the case of Joseph Randone.
He was given Trasyldol to minimize complications from his heart surgery. Instead, the drug caused his kidneys to fail, and set off a chain reaction that forced him to have both legs amputated, a tracheotomy, and to be put on a ventilator to breathe.
Then food in his body backed up to the point where his corneas exploded, and they had to sew his eyes shut.
He died shortly thereafter.
His family has filed an $80-million dollar lawsuit against the manufacturer, Bayer, which says that patient safety is it’s foremost concern. The FDA, bold as ever, ruled that the drug will stay on the market, with added warnings labels.
PHARMACISTS TELL POPE TO MIND HIS OWN BUSINESS
Pope Benedict caused a ruckus recently when he urged pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs such as the “morning-after pill”, which can stop ovulation if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse.
Franco Caprino, head of Federfarma, said that by law Italian pharmacists have to distribute medicine prescribed by a doctor. Health Minister Livia Turco said that while the Pope has the right to urge young people to be sexually responsible, he can not tell pharmacists what to do.
MEDICINAL ALCOHOL
Pharma Report followers know that we hear have a soft spot for adult beverage, and are particularly interested in Japanese Brewer Kirin Holdings bid to acquire drug maker Kyowa Hakko.
Kirin is Japan’s largest brewmaker and is seeking a 50.1% holding in the company.
Here at the Pharma Report, we bring back the ever-intoxicating PharmaGirl to ponder the millennial relationship between alcohol and medicine.
Since the times of Dionysus, wine was believed to believed to
stimulate appetite, aid digestion, increase energy, and was prescribed
for practically every complaint.For example, 19th century English scientists provided evidence that wine could be a miracle cure, and debates raged about how to match different vineyards and vintages to different medical conditions.
Medical societies debated the virtues of reds and whites and even champagnes. Doctors weren’t just doctors, but wine experts too. Their prescriptions to patients included up to six glasses of wine with meals, or three glasses of champagne five times a day.
By the early 20th century, wine as a remedy faded from practice as pharmaceuticals took hold and societies worried about alcoholism.
But even today, we have proponents of what’s called the “French Paradox”, that the French have low levels of coronary artery disease despite high fat diets because of the red wine they consume.
Wine, Louis Pasteur once said, is the most healthful and the most hygienic of all beverages.
We here at the Pharma Report most respectfully agree.
VIAGRA CAUSES LOVE
A Pharma Report wouldn’t be a Pharma Report without passing mention of our old favorite, Viagra. In a Happy HannuKwanzamus type of way, It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Turns out the little blue pill doesn’t just cause erections: It also raises levels of the hormone Oxytocin - at least in lab rats at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Oxytocin is involved in orgasm and sexual desire, but also in nursing and breastfeeding, which suggests that Viagra could promote feelings of, well, love and bonding.
Sounds perfect for the holiday seasons. Which is why we left little blue pills for Santa instead of cookies and milk.
BREASTS TURN WOMEN ON
Speaking of love and bonding, women who are exposed to the smell of breastfeeding experience a 20 percent increase in sexual desire and fantasies, according to a study at the The Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia.
Researches suggest this probably evolved because the presence of nursing mothers signals that conditions are favorable for breeding, but to us here at the Pharma Report, it signals the imminant arrival of new mammaradesiacs.
That’s it for the HealthDot Pharma Report, I’m Michael Cervieri. Stay well, stay informed, be healthy.
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