Tag Archives: Marketing

Selling Depression—Adding New Spin and Urgency to Depression Drug Sales

The discovery that many people with life problem or occasional bad moods would willingly dose themselves with antidepressants sailed the drug industry through the 2000s. A good chunk of the $4.5 billion a year direct-to-consumer advertising has been devoted to convincing people they don’t have problems with their job, the economy and their family, they have depression. Especially because depression can’t be diagnosed from a blood test.

Unfortunately, three things dried up the depression gravy train for the drug industry. Blockbusters went off patent and generics took off, antidepressants were linked with gory and unpredictable violence, especially in young users and — they didn’t even work, according to medical articles!

FDA approved Big Pharma drugs without effectiveness data

Consumers constantly are told how complicated it is to get a new drug on the market. After all, researchers have to jump through all sorts of hoops to assure safety before new therapies are approved for the public, right? It turns out they may be missing some of those hoops or not jumping through some of the most important ones.

In fact, huge red flags are being raised about how drugs are tested and approved in two new studies, including one just published in the May 4th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

A case in point: it turns out that only about half of the new prescription medications pushed onto the market over the last decade had the proper data together for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – yet the FDA approved them anyhow.

Another Psychiatric Drug, Another Potential Criminal Investigation—J&J’s Antipsychotic Risperdal

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) said it’s in discussions with the government to resolve a long-running investigation of whether it improperly marketed the antipsychotic Risperdal. In 2004, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a subpoena seeking documents regarding sales and marketing of Risperdal, as well as payments to physicians and clinical trials for the drug, from 1997 to 2002. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia sent an additional subpoena in 2005, seeking information about Risperdal marketing and adverse reactions associated with the drug. Grand jury subpoenas have been issued seeking testimony from various witnesses.

Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals—How Female Sexual Dysfunction (a “mental disorder”) was invented by the drug industry

Female sexual dysfunction – which is claimed to affect up to two thirds of women – is a disorder invented by the pharmaceutical industry to build global markets for drugs to treat it, it is claimed today. Drug companies have invested millions in the search for a female equivalent of Viagra, so far without success. But while doing so they have stoked demand by creating a buzz around the disorder they have created, according to Ray Moynihan, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Making a Market in Antipsychotic Drugs: An Ironic Tragedy

Remember not so long ago when Prozac became the world’s largest selling medication of any kind, and then for years how Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft took over many of the top 10 spots? Remember the explanations at the time–that they were wonder drugs and that 15-50 percent or more of Americans would need them some time in their lives? To many people this seemed like a scientific breakthrough when in reality it was … a triumph of marketing.