Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

Maybe Wyeth should take a serious look at The Onion’s new tongue-in-cheek ‘Advil Release’. Who knows — maybe it could be the next blockbuster.

“New Pain-Inducing Advil Created For People Who Just Want To Feel Something — Anything”, reads the headline in the latest issue of The Onion, the popular faux-news satirical web site.

The goofy article announces a new line of Advil, called ‘Advil Release’, that promises to replace a dull, listless and numbing life with a refreshing burst of agonizing pain.

Ad for the new temporarily-life-affirming Advil.

Sparing nothing in its path, The Onion boldly ‘quotes’ Wyeth chairman, president and CEO Bernard Poussot as saying, “Advil Release delivers a soothing burst of pain when cold and listless Americans need it most. Just two capsules can deliver all-day relief in the form of searing, life-affirming agony; the kind of agony Advil users trust when being a pale specter of humanity adrift in a meaningless and uncaring universe is just not an option anymore.”

According to faux-Poussot, the new drug (presumably OTC) works “by delivering a powerful stimulant straight to the brain’s pain center, causing an intense stinging sensation all over the body. If taken regularly, the deadening futility of day-to-day life will be temporarily washed away in a flood of blessed and cleansing torment.”

The CEO recommends “two fast-acting, long-lasting Advil Release taken three times a day . . . for anyone who is convinced he or she will never laugh or cry again. Teenagers who see no difference between being dead or alive, nor why it makes a difference either way, may require twice the suggested dosage.”

As funny as this is, it is clever, I think diabolically clever, in how it captures so clearly what may be one of the defining essences of the breakdown of life in modern America — its soaring dependence on prescription drugs to just get through the day.

With antidepressant prescriptions somewhere in the hundreds of millions, and claims by various medical and pharma spokespeople that 16 percent or more of Americans will suffer major depression at some time in their lives — and with all the controversy surrounding antidepressants — maybe a new approach is a great idea.

And in fact this silly approach to depression or just the blahs is really an old one, perhaps the oldest of all — a good slap in the face and a sharp, “Oh for goodness sakes, snap out of it.”

At the risk of sounding callous or unfeeling, or non-pharmaceutically correct, I want to ask readers to think of the times, and there must be at least a few, when you have been faced with someone blubbering or mumbling in the depths of despair over something so trivial, so unreasonably and impossibly self-centered, so obviously an excuse just to get your attention, that you just wanted to SLAP them!

With new “Advil Release” you would now have the new, pharmaceutical equivalent of a face-slap that actually treats two uncomfortable conditions:

• It promises to snap the annoying whiner out of their specious despair into the real and enjoyable pain of everyday life, bringing blessed relief to both of you.

• It spares the would-be slapper from the embarrassment that must accompany the later groveling ‘slap-pology’.

C’mon Poussot. Think about it. Talk to your marketing people. And forget about the potential law-suits from super-sensitive sissies that don’t read the label. I think it’s a blockbuster just waiting to happen.

Hawthorne’s ad for a recently approved hydrocodone-acetaminophen liquid pain killer, a schedule III drug for kids as young as 2 years old, is raising more than a few eyebrows.

According to Ed Silverman’s Pharmalot blog, two months ago Hawthorn Pharmaceuticals launched Zamicet, an oral solution approved by the FDA to treat moderate to moderately severe pain for children two years and older.

Zamicet contains hydrocodone bitartrate and acetaminophen, and is therefore a Schedule III controlled substance, which means it is highly addictive.

An ad accompanying the new drug on the Hawthorn web site and possibly in other media, says Silverman, appears to depict a child jumping for joy after winning a karate match, rather than a child suffering some serious pain deserving of a Schedule III drug.

Silverman asks: “So what might the message be? Perhaps Zamicet should be kept in a handy spot in the medicine cabinet in the event of any injury? This is subtle, no doubt. But we wonder about the targeted market.”

Judging from the more than two dozen comments on the blog — and Pharmalot readers are by-and-large a pharma-aware group of professionals — the ad is not illegal, but oversteps the bounds of ethical advertising.

To me the picture of an obviously young child — probably not more than 5 — celebrating rather than suffering, might suggest to doctors and the public that Zamicet is just the ticket for kids to play sports or go to Disneyland on while semi-stoned on hydrocodone.

I don’t know about you, but I took a hydrocodone pill after surgery a couple of years ago, and I was spaced out for most of the afternoon. Maybe I’m not typical, but one was all it took to make me decide to suffer physically rather than mentally. I simply can’t imagine how a 5-year-old sailing on hydrocodone can do much of anything, never mind whup some other kid’s butt in karate.

Hawthorn may not be illegally misleading doctors, who are supposed to know a thing or two about drugs. As for consumers, this ad is unethical in its depiction of the results of a hydrocodone buzz in a 5-year-old. And who knows, maybe there are some doctors out there who are as gullible and suggestible as the public.

My hope is that we won’t be reading soon or ever about kids (or adults) dying from downing a whole bottle of this stuff. This is definitely not something to leave unattended in a medicine cabinet or on the kitchen counter.

Dr. Fred Goodwin’s white-wash of antidepressants’ role in suicides leads a Congressional committee to dig up the radio host’s past as a well-paid Big Pharma promoter. And miffed that conflict of interest was not revealed, an NPR chief removes the show from its archives.

Back in May of this year, the National Public Radio (NPR) talk show ‘The Infinite Mind’, hosted by psychiatrist and Big Pharma apologist Dr. Fred Goodwin, aired a segment titled ‘Prozac Nation: Revisited’, on which he and three ‘expert’ guests took pains to point out how our worries about the well-researched connections between antidepressants and suicide have all been puffed up by ill-informed media.

What wasn’t revealed, reported Slate in May, was the fact that all four participants in the show have financial ties to Big Pharma, and the show itself has received grants from Big Pharma, including Lilly, maker of Prozac and Cymbalta.

The segment aired just two months after UK regulators concluded a four-year investigation of Glaxo’s Paxil and found the drugmaker had been aware since 1998 that its pill was associated with a higher risk of suicidal behavior in adolescents.

News breaking now, reports Ed Silverman at Pharmalot, are revelations from Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Senate Finance Committee, which has dug up some juicy facts on Goodwin’s profitable ties to Big Pharma. Since 2000, for example, Glaxo has paid Goodwin more than $1.2 million in speaking fees and over $100,000 in expenses.

Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (more Big Pharma influence there) has received tens or hundreds of thousands in payments over the years from Solvay, Janssen, Pfizer, Lilly, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Elan and Novartis for plugging drugs to doctor groups. Pharmalot contains many more details we don’t have room for here.

The experts on the show last May with Goodwin, with the info that was not revealed:

• Nada Stotland, president of the American Psychiatric Association, served on the speakers’ bureaus of Glaxo and Pfizer; and APA receives millions in funding from Big Pharma.

• Peter Pitts, director of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest which is majorly funded by Big Pharma, and senior vp for global health affairs at Manning Selvage & Lee, PR reps for Lilly, Pfizer, Glaxo and others. He was introduced only as “a former FDA official”. Pitt co-authored a Washington Times article last February titled ‘Tabloid Medicine’ that savages the media, Sen. Grassley and his committee, and anyone else who questions antidepressants’ links to violence and suicide.

• Andrew Leuchter, a psychiatry professor at UCLA, who has received research money from drugmakers, including Lilly, Pfizer, and Novartis.

The New York Times reports this week that Bill Lichtenstein, the program’s producer, was not told about Goodwin’s financial ties to Pharma, and says that Goodwin denied receiving any funding. NPR’s vp Margaret Low Smith says the show will be removed from the satellite service, and claims it would not have aired at all if NPR had known about Goodwin’s Big Pharma apron strings.

Big Pharma and Wall Street need to get a grip on reality. The time has come for the profligacy to come to an end, and for sensible business practices to take over.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Big Pharma’s largest lobbying group, is readying a multimillion-dollar PR campaign to undercut the Obama administration’s expected push for price controls of prescription drugs.

According to a Washington Times report, the campaign will include television spots touting “the importance of free-market health care.”

Obama, who made health care reform a major plank in his platform, “attacked drug companies repeatedly during his election campaign,” the paper reports.

Obama said he will hold drug and insurance companies “accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause.” And he has promised to give Medicare the right to negotiate with drugmakers for cheaper prices.

The PR effort, to begin airing late in November, signals what could become yet another war that the new administration will inherit from the pharma-friendly Bush administration, along with Iraq and Afghanistan.

A report from Boston Consulting Group estimates such negotiations could result in a $10 billion to $30 billion annual revenue loss to Big Pharma.

“We’re going to do an ad campaign that is designed to make people aware of the importance of preserving your free-market health care system,” Ken Johnson, senior vp at PhRMA, tells the paper, adding that PhRMA recognizes that some reforms are needed in order to keep that system vibrant, and that PhRMA would run the same ad campaign if John McCain had won the election.

The Times suggests that the PhRMA campaign indicates that the industry is leaving nothing to chance. Yet, it says, drugmakers gave more than $1.6 million to Obama’s campaign — almost triple the amount the industry gave to McCain.

“We’ve been moving the pieces on the chess board around for some time now getting ready for next year, and we’ve got a great game plan in place,” Johnson tells the Times. “We think we’ve earned a right at the table, and we’re optimistic that at the end of the day, the majority of members of Congress will recognize the importance of the pharmaceutical industry to health care.”

Big Pharma views Obama’s promises to bring down drug prices as an attack on the industry.  But a majority of Americans elected the new president because, among other things, they agree that the costs of drugs in this country are out of control — especially compared to costs for the same drugs almost everywhere else in the world.

And Americans also don’t like the fact that while it’s gouging Americans, Big Pharma logs the highest profits in the world of business and pays its top execs obscene amounts of money. The compensation for perhaps three dozen top execs of the top dozen or so corporations totals at least a billion dollars in salaries, bonuses and stock options, and lavish perks — like helicopter commutes, limos everywhere, outrageously expensive gatherings, and exotic personal getaways. And all that while tens of thousands of American pharma employees were tossed out over the past two years to “save money.”

Big Pharma and Wall Street need to get a grip on reality. The time has come for the profligacy to come to an end, and for sensible business practices to take over.