Dr Briffa & Drug companies

[wonderwoman]

Dr Briffa's newsletter I received today says once again what Tex and others here have thought all along

The more aggressively a drug is marketed, the more suspicious we should be of it, apparently

When a pharmaceutical company develops a drug, they naturally want doctors to know about it. Drug companies spend a lot of money marketing drugs to doctors, with the hope that these doctors will ultimately prescribe them to their patients. Naturally, drug companies like to present their wares in as positive a light as possible. As a result, drug companies marketing departments and their reps may use tactics that can put patients at risk. Last week, the American Journal of Public Health published on-line a piece which highlighted some of the practices used to persuade doctors to prescribe a drug that may put health and even lives in jeopardy. For more on this, click this link.

http://www.drbriffa.com/2011/01/17/the- ... -it-seems/

[Polly]

Hi Charlotte,

As a physician, I can attest to the validity of this. It has bothered me for years. The aggressive marketing is unbelievable. I also hate that very scary drugs are advertised daily in the public media. And it occurs to me that many of the ones advertised should be used infrequently if at all. You don't often see TV ads, for example, for tried and true common drugs, like diruetics or other blood pressure meds, thyroid meds, etc. No, it's the big guns for rarer diseases like psychosis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. And don't you just love all of the potential side effects that are rattled off in the ad - even things like "sudden death". I wonder how many docs face pressure from their patients to try these drugs that they see in the media and are led to believe are wonder drugs.

Love,

Polly

[TooManyHats]

When treating autism, many "off-label" medications are or have been used. So I'm used to that and had my son on a medication that was prescribed off-label, but has since been approved for the purpose it is now prescribed. It was when he was prescribed Neurontin that I saw the "off-label" marketing push of a medication that was a huge failure so it had to be tauted for anything they could get away with prescribing it for--mostly off-label. Big Pharma will do anything not to loose all the money they put into research, development, and marketing of a drug. The fast track for approval also lends itself to dangerous medications getting to market.