Tuesday, January 12, 2010

My Exclusive Interview With The Antibiotic Doryx.

Me: Thanks for making the time to come in today Doryx, I know you're a busy drug.

Doryx: Thank you for having me Drugmonkey, and for the opportunity to explain why my unique enteric-coated pellets of doxycycline hyclate means there is no substitute for me!

DM: Meaning if your doctor writes a prescription for Doryx, it cannot be filled with any other type of doxycycline.

DOR:That's right!!

DM: What did people do before you came to market?

DOR: Well they didn't get the benefit of my unique enteric-coated pellets, that's for sure!

DM: No, seriously, what did they do?

DOR: Got by with outdated versions of doxycycline the best they could I suppose.

DM: And did these old fashioned versions of doxycycline have some sort of problem with bacterial resistance, or another sort of effectiveness problem that necessitated your invention?

DOR: My niche is more on the safety side Drugmonkey, you see, my enteric coating means I don't start to dissolve until I pass though the low pH environment of the stomach and into your intestine, and if I don't start to dissolve until I pass through your stomach, the chances of me triggering stomach cancer and leading you to a slow agonizing death would seem to be almost nil. Did you know stomach cancer has one of the lowest survival rates of any malignancy?

DM: Are you saying other forms of doxycycline cause stomach cancer?

DOR: Well I'm not in a position to comment on what other doxycyclines might or might not do. All I'm saying is that I never touch your stomach. I also contain no uranium, which means the chances of me becoming fissionable material and triggering a thermonuclear reaction are pretty much zero.

DM: So Doryx could be an integral part of a nuclear-free world?

DOR: Absolutely.

DM: I see. So while we're on the subject of safety, do you cause less fetal harm if given to a pregnant woman than regular doxycycline?

DOR: No.

DM: Less photosensitivity?

DOR: No.

DM: Less Clostridium difficile associated diarrhea?

DOR: No.

DM: Less....

DOR: Look, I'm enteric coated, OK? I think the benefits of that would be self-evident.

DM: So self-evident that it's not really necessary to do any actual scientific studies to quantify what these benefits might be?

DOR: There are limited research dollars for these type of things you know. I think we can all agree that our resources are best spent elsewhere.

DM: Speaking of limited dollars, you are aware that a month of Doryx therapy can cost over $400?

DOR: I'm glad you brought that up Drugmonkey, the people at Warner Chilcott, who make me, are very concerned about the impact of high drug prices on patient care. That's why we've developed the Doryx Savings Card program. Once enrolled in this program, a patient will pay no more than $25 dollars for a Doryx prescription, cutting the retail price by over 90%!! Those are real savings for real people.

DM: For the first three months.

DOR: Well, yes.

DM: And with how you've positioned yourself as an acne medication, as opposed to an antibiotic to treat acute infections, you expect most of your customers to take you for far more than 3 months, don't you?

DOR: Unless they want their zits to come back and end all their chances of ever being accepted by the cool kids in school.

DM: And you know a month of regular doxycycline costs less than $15.

DOR: Look, I know our time is running short here, but ask yourself, if your tumor-laden stomach were to explode in a toxic mushroom cloud, how much would you have paid to prevent that? There are some things you just can't put a price on Drugmonkey. Thanks again for having me on.

DM: We.....um...actually have plenty of time left.

Doryx bolts out of the studio......


____

Disclaimer: There is no link between any form of doxycycline and stomach cancer. That was just a fictional example of the kind of bullshit I imagine Doryx would say if it could talk.

10 comments:

There's a sucker born every minute said...

"DM: Speaking of limited dollars, you are aware that a month of Doryx therapy can cost over $400?"

Jesus Christ! That price must be to recoup the "billions of $'s that went into the r&d to develop this new wonder drug" (i.e., the enteric coating)- the usual bullshit line that pharma and its supporters use to justify their obscene prices.

I take 100mg of doxycycline daily as a prophylactic and have been doing so since 1995 with no GI problems whatever.

When I moved in 2008, I had my old GP phone-in an Rx for 180 (aka a 6 month supply) 100mg doxy's to Costco. The price? $19.66 - $3.28 per month.

One would need to have a very, very sensitive stomach (or a very, very small brain) to sign up for this crap.

Anonymous said...

So basically what you are saying is that you support thermonuclear reactive stomach cancer as long as it's occurrence is limited to zit-faced pathetically uncool teenagers. Do you realize that makes you an ageist classist hater of the dermatologicaly challenged?
Just shameful!

Anonymous said...

OOH! OOH!

Do Solodyn next!!!

Anonymous said...

Funny the looks you get when you ask a drug rep for a drug to drug comparison study. I guarantee they do them, but when the results don't come up as planned they switch to a non-inferiority study, which just says I am no worse than drug X but cost 10x more. As I hospital director, I won't even listen to them if their drug only does a non-inferiority study.

Anonymous said...

For any amount of validity to those non-inferiority studies, they have to enlist 1,000s or 100,000s more volunteers than the straightforwardness. The companies never do get that many people to sign up for a single study, so the put studies together from all over the world, from an office here in Bogata, to a clinic in Brussels, to a site in NYC. You tell me that the same investigational conditions are the same wherever, no matter the pod-size.

The Redheaded Pharmacist said...

Tell Doryx that I said he is an over priced punk the next time you talk to him!

Phrustrated Pharmacist said...

If I have to process another fucking dermatologic coupon I'm going to bring a bathtub full of warm water to work. This will more easily facilitate me slitting my wrists and going night-night peacefully. Murderers.

Tyler said...

Stuff like this makes me sick. I found a really bad example the other day. It was a benzo, I think restoril or something like that. A medication that can be habit forming. The two really common strengths were dirt cheap, like 12 dollars a month or something, but the inbetween doses (like the ones you might use if you were trying to wean someone off, which is what my patient was trying to do) cost about 150 dollars for a month supply. The patient freaked out, and I looked, and sure as shit, if the 7.5mg tabs didn't cost 140 dollars more a month than the 15mg tabs. WTF!?!

And on that subject, screw every S isomer of a drug that comes out convieniently when the regular drug loses its patent. Screw all the people on medicaid taking 400-600 a month worth of adderal XR. And most of all, fuck Treximet!!!!!!!!!! When the drug reps come and try to talk to me about this, I have a really hard time not laughing

Từ Thanh Giác said...

OMFG: I have been taking doxycycline when I go into malaria regions. Now I have to worry about stomach cancer. Have I been giving those misquotes stomach cancer? Will the enteric form protect the mosquitoes. So much research is needed.
There should be a warning on the prescribing information. "Doctor if you prescribe this you need your head examined "

Anonymous said...

I think Amrix is the BIGGEST scam going on right now. An "extended" release muscle relaxer?!?! WHY?!?!? And notice that the reps compare the benefits of Amrix vs. Cyclobenzaprine 10mg, but NEVER bring up the 5mg strength!