Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A Tale Of Drug Company Pud Sucking That Somehow Managed To Slip Beneath The Drugmonkey's Radar

It takes a village to keep up with Big Pharma's pursuit of every last possible dollar regardless of any health benefit to you. I was pointed to this sad but true tale by an alert reader who I'm sure wants to remain anonymous. Here's the teaser that I hope gets you to read the whole post:

If you've contracted HIV, executives at Abbott Laboratories seriously debated whether to force you to drink a liquid it knows tastes like vomit.

The story starts in the late 90's with the introduction of Norvir, part of the revolution in AIDS treatment that turned it from a death sentence into a manageable condition for lucky folks with cash. AIDS is still a death sentence for most people who contract the disease. Norvir kinda sucked, to the point where you really couldn't use it at a high enough dose for it to work and still have people tolerate it. No problem, you can combine it at a lower dose with other meds and if you have enough money to pay for it all you'll live. Yay.

Those other meds were made by other drug companies though, and remember what the number one mission of Big Pharma is. Your health. BBBRRRWWWAAAHHHAAAHHHAAA!!!! No seriously, the number one mission of every single member of Big Pharma is the accumulation of each and every last dollar it can get it's hands on. Remember this.

This drive for dollars isn't always a bad thing. In 2000, it led Abbott to combine the sucky Norvir with another med under the brand name Kaletra. The combination meant that patients took fewer pills, resulting in fewer missed doses and just a general lessening of the pain in the assness of managing around the clock AIDS therapy. Abbott was happy to be easing the burden of people fighting this terrible, life threatening disease. No they weren't. They were happy that people were now taking fewer tablets made by other companies. The lessening of the burden was just a side effect to them. Anyway, the story is still a happy one at this point.

Then in 2003, Bristol Myers Squibb had the bad taste to introduce a new AIDS medicine called Reyataz, and to present a study that showed that Reyataz combined with Norvir was as effective as Kaletra, with fewer side effects. Patients on this regimen would also be taking still fewer pills, further lessening the pain in the assness of living with AIDS. Abbott did the right thing and immediately sent a letter to doctors recommending new patients be treated with the superior Reyataz/Norvir combination, even though that would mean less money for them than if docs chose the inferior Kaletra.

OK, did you believe that? Seriously, did you honestly for a second believe the line about Abbott sending that letter to doctors? If you did, you probably believe this too, cut and pasted from the Abbott web site:

Throughout our 100+ year history, Abbott people have been driven by a constant goal: to advance medical science to help people live healthier lives. It's part of our heritage. And it continues to drive our work.


So, when the Reyataz/Norvir study was released, executives from Abbott started having meetings to try and decide how they could drive their work towards their constant goal of advancing medical science to help people live healthier lives. It's their heritage you know. Keep in mind two things before I tell you what they come up with.

1) Rayataz doesn't really work very well without Norvir.

2) Abbott would still make a pissload of money on sales of Reyataz/Norvir combo therapy, just not as much as if docs would prescribe the inferior Kaletra.

Here are some of the ideas Abbott executives came up with:

- Jacking the price of Norvir through the roof.

-Withdrawing Norvir capsules from the market, leaving only the liquid form of Norvir on the market.

John Leonard, Abbott’s vice president of global pharmaceutical research and development, referred to liquid Norvir as "this fluid that has been — I’ll just say it — characterized as tasting like someone else’s vomit."


Abbott executives suggested telling the public that Norvir pills were no longer on the market because "they needed to be sent to the developing world (i.e. Africa) as part of a humanitarian effort."

There are 12 million children in Africa who have no parents because of AIDS. It's nice of Abbott to care about this enough to incorporate it into a lie.

- Pulling all Norvir from the market. Abbott cares so much about it's constant goal of advancing medical science that it seriously considered cutting off access to the treatment option best tolerated by patients. It's all about the heritage baby.

In the end, knowing Big Pharma's love affair with dollars, I'll bet you can guess what option Abbott went with. The price of Norvir went up 400%, taking the cost of the better tolerated Reyataz/Norvir combo therapy to $11,187 a year. The average annual income in Sub-Saharan Africa is around $600. They're still waiting for those humanitarian effort Norvir capsules to show up.

Read the whole story here.

5 comments:

Mother Jones RN said...

Well, isn't this just lovely. Damn blood suckers.

MJ

Anonymous said...

You forgot to include the decision by NIH. "he NIH decided in Abbott’s favor, saying it wasn’t empowered to determine whether a drug’s price was too high." It's nice to know the government care for the people too, especially prison inmates with AIDS.

Anonymous said...

When I was reading it over again, I realized some readers might get the impression that Abbott was the big-bad-guy and BMS just wanted to do right by the AIDS public. Remember when BMS/Sanofi payed Apotex $40 million to delay its release of generic Plavix? Whether it's AIDS or cardiovascular disease, or whatever... you're screwed

DrugMonkey, Master of Pharmacy said...

I wrote about the BMS/Apotex story earlier here . It's one of my favorite stories actually.....

Anonymous said...

My PharmD brought your site to my attention since he has heard me on a rampage with the Abbott rep in my office over this issue. I like your website and since I am a residency director, plan to make it required reading for my residents, since they think the reps are here to educate them about their wonderful new drugs.