Posted by Dan Perkins on January 1, 2005, at 12:26:46
I was amazed at how just about every news publication bungled the story of the FDA approval of Lyrica. They all reported that it was a big win for Pfizer, but the Wall Street Journal got the story correct of how it was actually bad news. Just shows how most health reporting is basically pharmaceutical company propaganda. Here is an exerpt of the WSJ article (do a google news search on Lyrica to see how all the other publications reported this as a Pfizer victory):
Pfizer Feels More Pain
The Food and Drug Administration slapped Pfizer's new drug, Lyrica, which treats the pain of nerve damage caused by diabetes and shingles, with a "controlled substance" label, making it harder to prescribe. The FDA also rejected it for use in treating epilepsy. In September, the FDA rejected the drug for use in treating anxiety. Pfizer had hoped that Lyrica would take the torch from its fading star Neurontin, a treatment for epilepsy and nerve-damage pain that recently became a cheaper generic version plagued by competing generics. Instead, Lyrica may be less useful and harder to prescribe than Neurontin. "This puts Pfizer in an extremely weak selling position versus their own generic," Richard Evans, pharmaceuticals analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, told the Wall Street Journal.
poster:Dan Perkins
thread:436336
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041228/msgs/436336.html