Latest Drugwonks' Blog
No matter how you say it, prescription drug counterfeiting is international health care terrorism
(And so much for certain US politicians who claim that Europe has no problem with counterfeiting.)
EU Says Counterfeit Drugs On The Rise In Europe
BRUSSELS (AP) — An increasing amount of fake drugs is being sold over the Internet in Europe, the European Union warned Monday.The European Commission said a recent survey conducted by E.U. member states, identified 170 fake medicines that were being distributed illegally, mostly through Web sites offering fake or unauthorized lifestyle drugs, growth hormones and sleeping drugs … “I am alarmed at the ever increasing number of counterfeit medicines sold via the Internet. This represents a real danger to the health of patients,” said E.U. Enterprise Commissioner Guenther Verheugen.Lifestyle drugs, such as Viagra, and essential medicines such as antibiotics and insulin are particularly popular with counterfeiters, but there’s also an increasing number of fake contact lenses and even materials such as surgical mesh. Experts warned buying health products over the Internet can be a major health risk.
An excellent article in today’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times on the strides we are making towards making acute diseases chronic conditions. Here’s a sample:
In the last 25 years, the death rate from heart disease has been cut in half. On another front, the number of cancer deaths recently dropped for the first time in more than 70 years. Yet heart disease and cancer together still kill more Americans than all other causes of deaths combined. Researchers are developing high-tech new treatments such as targeted cancer drugs and stem cell heart therapies.
But the best way to fight the Big Killers is to not get sick in the first place. If we all simply took better care of ourselves, experts say, we could cut the death toll from cancer and heart disease by at least 50 percent.
It’s worth a read. Here’s the link: http://www.suntimes.com/output/health/cst-nws-kill261.htm
Caroline Kovac (IBM’s Princess of Prescience) on what Big Pharma can learn from Big Blue:
“Replace the word blockbuster with mainframe and then we can talk.”
Nope, not a mixed metaphor. I just returned from Brussels where I spoke on what the Europeans call “information to patients” or “ItP” (what we heathens on this side of the Atlantic refer to as “direct to patient communications”). The event was at the Amigo Hotel. (For you trivia buffs, this hotel used to be a prison — and one of its most famous guests was Karl Marx.)
I spoke on the American experience with DTC advertising (both the pros and the problems) and my fellow panelist, James Copping, talked about how the EU is trying to figure out what to do next, since “not American-style drug advertising” is not a go-forward policy. Jim’s a player. He’s the Principal Administrator for the EU’s Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General, the body drafting the EU’s go-forward recommendations.
One interchange between Jim and me that is worth sharing:
COPPING: “We must find new ways to regulate health care information to patients.”
PITTS: “Jim, I think a better way to frame the question is to say that you need to find new ways to facilitate health care information to patients.”
COPPING: “Yes, that’s right.”
God’s speed Mr. Copping.
Here’s an exciting timely and important new paper on what antihypertensives have accomplished and what more could be accomplished if people were treated to guideline. It’s a clarion call to address our nation’s (indeed the globe’s) chronic health care problem — ignoring the urgency of focusing on chronic care.
The Impact of Antihypertensive Drugs on the Number and Risk of Death,
Stroke and Myocardial Infarction in the United States by Genia Long,
David Cutler, Ernst R. Berndt, Jimmy Royer, Andree-Anne Fournier, Alicia
Sasser, Pierre Cremieux #12096 (AG HC)
Abstract:
Estimating the value of medical innovation is a continual challenge.
In this research, we quantify the impact of antihypertensive therapy on U.S. blood pressures, risk and number of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths. We also consider the potential for further improvements.
We estimate the value of innovation using equations relating blood pressure to adverse outcomes from the Framingham Heart Study. Our results show that without antihypertensive therapy, 1999-2000 average blood pressure for the U.S. population age 40 plus would have been 10-13 percent higher. 86,000 excess premature deaths from cardiovascular disease (2001), and 833,000 hospital discharges for stroke and heart attacks (2002) would have occurred. Life expectancy would be 0.5 (men) and 0.4 (women) years lower. At guideline care, there would have been 89,000 fewer premature deaths (2001) and 420,000 fewer hospital discharges for stroke and heart attack (2002) than observed. Our analysis suggests that antihypertensive therapy has had a significant impact on cardiovascular health outcomes but that mortality gains would have been approximately twice as high if guideline care had been achieved for all.
Here’s the link:
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W12096
New state-by-state fact sheets are now available at the Medicare Rx Education Network website.
Here’s the link:
http://www.medicarerxeducation.org/statefacts.htm
According to Canadian law enforcement authorities, the Hell’s Angels used their Canada-wide connections to supply a major drug trafficking network that operated in the lower Laurentians. Police seized 49 kilograms of cocaine and smaller quantities of hashish and marijuana. They also found more than 136,000 Viagra pills. Other people are still being sought on warrants in the on-going investigation, dubbed Project Piranha.
I’m blogging to you from the Arizona State University conference, “Transforming American Healthcare Over the Next Decade.” Organized by ASU, the C-Path Institute (led by CMPI board member Dr. Ray Woosley) and CMPI — this event brings together many of the leading thinkers on 21st century medicine.
Here are a few snippets:
The Second Hundred Years
“When you compare what’s available today versus 100 years ago you have to wonder whether we’re not spending enough on health care.” (Senator Jon Kyl, R, AZ)
T.S. Eliot and the Critical Path
“We must transcend mindless empiricism. Today medicine is still an empirical science. We still approach it as a one-size-fits-all situation. T.S. Eliot wrote that ‘Hell is the place where nothing connects.’ We must confront the unacceptable cost of an unconnected healthcare system.” (George Poste, MD, The Biodesign Institute, ASU)
Do not take this medication if you operate heavy machinery or are African-American
“The Critical Path will lead to advances such as gene or haplotype specific labeling as well as ethnopharmacology.” (George Poste, MD)
The Problem in a Snapshot
“Are today’s pharmaceuticals the Kodak film of the Digital Age?” (Ray Woosley, MD)
An Alliterative Illustration
“21st century medicine must be patient-centric, proactive, preventive, and predictive.” (Caroline Kovac, IBM)
And in case you don’t think regulators have a sense of humor
“Relative to polymorphic metabolism, slow metabolizers are cheap dates for their healthcare providers.” (Janet Woodcock, MD, FDA Deputy Commissioner and COO)
Well, so much for me-tooism. The ineffable LA Times, which actually does get things right occasionally, reports today the finding of a major government study “that at least a quarter of clinically depressed patients who failed to achieve a complete remission with one antidepressant succeeded by adding a drug or by switching drugs.”
Whoda thunk it? After all, did the Great Marcia Angell—-physician, economist, courageous siren with respect to The Truth About the Drug Companies—-not solemnly inform us awhile back that only two or three drugs in any given class are needed, and that further research and development investment in given classes is a social waste? And that the evil pharmaceutical producers are interested in profits and little else? And that advertising—-the provision of information—-is wasteful, and the the drug market simply does not work in some sense, ad infinitum? Well, yes, indeed she did. And indeed did she get virtually everything wrong in her silly book. Such are the fruits of economic analysis conducted by noneconomists with an ax to grind.
The LA Times published this latest report in the Science and Medicine section; Marcia’s “findings” were trumpeted on the front page, above the fold. But progress is to be welcomed.
I will be writing about this issue in far greater depth soon, but there seems to be a view in Beltwayland, among the suburbs of which are the NY Times and the LA Times, that drug prices ought in some sense to reflect “costs,” however defined, and that efforts by the pharmaceutical producers to establish prices for new drugs in accordance with their higher economic (or medical) value is illegitimate.
Well. Let us recognize that politics by its very nature is the art of wealth redistribution, always and everywhere, and so discussions of drug prices must proceed with that context firmly in mind. Drug development is a process of iterative investment, research, and testing; that process must appeal to the capital market (investors) in order to be viable, that is, expected returns (adjusted for risk) must justify the prospective costs of the development process for any given project. If prices reflect only costs and not value, investment streams will be reduced from levels that would prevail otherwise; and that means automatically that the future supply of new and improved medicines will be lower than in the alternative.
And so the preference for cost-based drug pricing on the part of those utterly compassionate with other people’s money in the end boils down to the argument that future patients ought to subsidize current ones. It is only a coincidence, of course, that it is the current patients who vote; thus does the wealth redistribution dynamic emerge yet again. And yet again the highminded compassion of the elites proves as phony as it is in so very many other contexts, except that a reduction in the supply of drugs means more future suffering and higher medical costs overall. Such are the outcomes yielded by the nostrums of the unthinking.
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization promoting innovative solutions that advance medical progress, reduce health disparities, extend life and make health care more affordable, preventive and patient-centered. CMPI also provides the public, policymakers and the media a reliable source of independent scientific analysis on issues ranging from personalized medicine, food and drug safety, health care reform and comparative effectiveness.
