Prescription Drugs On TV: Mostly Worthless

73 percent of those new prescription drugs advertised on U.S. television had low therapeutic value, offering only slight benefit over other drugs already on the market, says a recent study. Those drugs accounted for $15.9 billion worth of advertising spending. Of the advertised drugs that had a value rating from Canada, France or Germany, 53 of them were classified as low-benefit, at best.

Back in 2015, the American Medical Association called for an all-out ban on DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) ads for prescription drugs and medical devices, saying they drive demand for expensive treatments despite the clinical effectiveness of less costly alternatives.

More:

“70% of drugs advertised on TV are of “low therapeutic value,” study finds,” Beth Mole, Ars Technica

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Guggenheim Museum Removes Toxic Sackler Name

New York City’s Guggenheim Museum is the latest cultural institution to remove the Sackler family name from its building. The Sackler family’s billions were accumuated over the dead bodies of 841,000 Americans who overdosed on the Oxycontin opioids pushed by their pharmaceutical company. The Sacklers shared some of their loot – and their name – with cultural institutions, hospitals, and universities, which are now beginning to wake up and smell the Narcan. The Sackler name and blood money have now been recognized as poison.

More:

“Guggenheim Removes Sackler Name Over Ties to Opioid Crisis,” Zachary Small, New York Times

“The Guggenheim Museum, Which Long Resisted Calls to Drop the Sackler Name, Has Finally Quietly Removed It,” Sarah Cascone, Artnet News

 

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Published Drug Research Accents the Po$titive

Scientific Method be damned, medical journals have an economic incentive for publishing papers with postive outcomes. When a drug study shows positive outcomes, pharmaceutical companies buy reprints of it in bulk to distribute it to prescribers.

Those purchases can add up to over $2 million. For journals like The Lancet ($40 annual revenue) and NEJM ($100 million/yr.), that’s huge. 41 percent of The Lancet’s 2021 income came from reprints. When it comes to drug studies, Big Phama’s thumb is firmly on the scale.

More:

Scientific journals are incentivized to publish positive drug studies,” Annalisa Merelli, Quartz

Related:

“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” John P. A. Ioannidis, PLOS Medicine

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Pharmaceutical Money

Pharmaceutical Money, a video from John Oliver. Ask your doctor!

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Even the Sackler Name Is Poison

The Sackler family’s billions were accumuated over the dead bodies of 841,000 Americans who overdosed on the Oxycontin opioids pushed by their pharmaceutical company. The Sacklers shared some of their loot – and their name – with cultural institutions, hospitals, and universities, which are now beginning to wake up and smell the Narcan. The Sackler name and blood money have been recognized as poison.

Following the lead of the Louvre, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Arts has removed the Sackler name from its buildings. Other museums scrubbing the Sacklers include: the National Portrait Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery, the South London Gallery, and the Tate Modern in London; and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Medical institutions are understandably sensitive to the drug-taint issue. Tufts University School of Medicine and NYU Langone Graduate Biomedical Institute successfully excised the Sackler name from their buildings, and other health nonprofits are exploring such surgery.

The Smithsonian Institution won’t rename the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, since Arthur was the Sackler brother who died a decade before before OxyContin was developed. Harvard isn’t renaming its Arthur M. Sackler Museum, either. The Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art seems to be fairly immune from the name controversy.

More: 

“The Met removes Sackler name from its galleries,” Peggy McGlone, Washington Post

“After Years of Activism, Sackler Name Will Be Removed From Met Museum,” Jasmine Liu, Hyperallergic

“Don’t strip the Sackler name from museums. It’s a visceral reminder of human greed,” Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian

Related:

“Stop blaming my late husband, Arthur Sackler, for the opioid crisis,” Jillian Sackler, Washington Post

Update:

“Judge rejects opioid settlement over legal protections for Sackler family,” The Guardian

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Rx Drugs: Timed-Release Bribery?

“An analysis by the publication Science has ‘found widespread after-the-fact payments or research support’ from pharmaceutical companies to expert officials who advised the Food and Drug Administration to approve those companies’ drugs.”

— “Pharma companies pay FDA advisers after drugs are approved,” Bob Herman, Axios

More:

“Hidden conflicts? Pharma payments to FDA advisers after drug approvals spark ethical concerns,” Charles Piller and Jia You, Science

“Majority of doctors who oversee FDA drug approval receive payments from companies they monitor, report shows,” Clark Mindock, The Independent

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Marketing to Doctors

A while back, John Oliver explained how Big Pharma markets to doctors so they’ll prescribe brand name drugs to patients. As we face another year of corporate deregulation and health care uncertainty, it bears another look:

Don’t Worry, There’s a Cure

At last, a treatment for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. Ask your doctor.

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Docs and Disclosure

Drug giant Pfizer paid $20 million in consulting and speaking fees to 4,500 medical professionals in the last six months of 2009.  The corporation, America’s biggest drug company, also paid $15.3 million to U.S. university medical centers for clinical trials of drug products. Corporate disclosure of payments to the people who decide which drugs to recommend is a good thing. right?

Not necessarily, says behavioral economist Dan Ariely. The court-mandated disclosures are designed to reduce conflicts of interest,  but may have the opposite effect: