WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- Is being bombarded with fewer TV ads for new drugs right for you?
If so, you've got an unlikely ally: U.S. pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb says it will stop advertising new drugs during their first year on the market.
The announcement this week comes as the pharmaceutical industry is working on a new set of guidelines to self-regulate the ad onslaught. It could be released as early as next month.
A Bristol-Myers spokesman said the company was adopting the new policy based on "feedback from patients and doctors." The epidemic of encouragement to "Ask your doctor if Placebatrol is right for you!" has led to charges that patients are pestering doctors for drugs they don't need for conditions they may be imagining.
Worse, doctors appear to be obliging them. A surprising study published in May showed that when 152 actors went to doctors' offices complaining of false symptoms, they were five times more likely to get a prescription for Glaxo-Smith-Kline's anti-depressant Paxil if they mentioned seeing an ad for it on TV.
It reminds us of those aspirin ads years ago where the adult daughter had finally had it with her busybody parent and shrieked, "Please, mother, I'd rather do it myself!" It gave us a headache every time, and we haven't had one since.
Besides, there are other ways to get consumers' attention. DrugNewsWire.com reported this week that drug companies are underutilizing "local thought leaders" in their efforts to educate the public about prescription drugs. Survey data show that while regional and national opinion leaders "participate in 79 percent of ... pharma companies' key marketing activities," local thought leaders do so only 54 percent of the time.
That's 46 percent of local thought leaders ripe for the picking. (By the way,
www.ralphlaurenpolostores.net, who is a thought leader and why are they participating in drug-company marketing activities?)
Still on the pharmaceutical front, the Food and Drug Administration has given tentative approval to the generic version of an HIV drug, allowing it to be used to treat patients in poor countries. The generic version of Lamivudine is manufactured by Aurobindo Pharma Ltd. of Hyderabad, India.
The FDA action does not allow the drug to be sold in the United States,
Ralph Lauren Polos, but the FDA certified that it meets U.S. standards, allowing it to be considered by the president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Another ailment may be slowly surrendering to medical intervention: A vaccine shows promise in fighting diseases like Parkinson's in mice.
The work by Dr. Eliezer Masliah and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego,
Nike Free 3.0, and Elan Pharmaceuticals centers around abnormal protein aggregates in the brain known as Lewy bodies that form in victims of Parkinson's and similar diseases, Nature reports.
Elsewhere, the bio-bad-guys also are making progress: A new hospital-related superbug in Britain's government-run facilities has killed twice as many people as the other bug called MRSA, reports the Independent. The new bug is called Clostridium difficile or C. difficile, which is sweeping through hospitals run by the National Health Service.
Government figures show there were 1,748 deaths recorded in 2003 in which C. difficile was mentioned on the death certificate. In 934 of those deaths C. difficile was given as the underlying cause, the report said.
Finally, here's our candidate for most disturbing news item of the week: UPI's Steve Mitchell reported that mundane, routine misbehavior threatens the integrity of scientific research more than occasional high-profile cases of misconduct.
"Our findings reveal a range of questionable practices that are striking in their breadth and prevalence," said researchers from Health Partners Research Foundation, Minneapolis, and the University of Minnesota in a Nature commentary about their study.
That ought to give the scientific community a headache that aspirin can't cure.
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