OxyContin: Purdue Pharma's painful medicine. Among the sellers of opioids, none has been more successful -- or controversial -- than Purdue Pharma, maker of the No. 1 drug in the class: OxyContin, which generated $3.1 billion in revenue in 2010. Purdue and its marketing prowess are the biggest reasons such drugs are now widely prescribed for all sorts of pain, says Dhalla: "Purdue played a very large role in making physicians feel comfortable about opioids." And as we'll see, Purdue's past and present go a long way toward explaining how so many Americans came to be in the grip of potent painkillers.
posted by storybored
on Jan 23, 2012 -
63 comments
Where Did All The Adderall Go? A mysterious American adderall shortage has paralyzed the cognition and emptied the pocketbooks of millions of legal tweakers this year. Try to pay attention: it's a fun history of amphetamine, shortages, grotesque corporate greed and the Holy Grail of Big Pharma business models that is the "addiction-proof" addictive drug. [via
mefi projects]
[more inside]
posted by DarlingBri
on Nov 19, 2011 -
183 comments
Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration in American history.
A documentary by Eric Merola.
posted by xmattxfx
on Jun 14, 2011 -
12 comments
Ever since the
Women's Health Initiative published data showing
increased risk and little benefit with post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy it has become more controversial and the
FDA now recommends using the lowest dose possible for the shortest time, if using it at all. Why was HRT so popular in the first place? It now appears one reason was that what appeared to be legitimate articles in peer reviewed journals were actually ghostwritten by drug companies.
[more inside]
posted by TedW
on Sep 24, 2010 -
22 comments
"Well, a lot of people have said DEA is in the dark on these issues,
but that is a little bit much." (.doc; long) Despite a power outage, an FDA-lead panel discusses how to manage abuse of the
infamous opiod painkiller
OxyContin.
Purdue Pharma, its sole manufacturer, had tried to bring its more powerful successor
Palladone (.pdf) to the market, before "dosage jump" issues lead to the drug
being pulled by the FDA. Meanwhile, trucks loaded with $3mil dollars of "oxys" continue to get hijacked for a $15mil street turnover, despite GPS tracking and other high-tech security measures used for cigarette distribution. Doctors invariably shuffle pills sideways despite
tamper-proof presciption pads (long). Purdue only stops selling more profitable and addictive
double-doses of OxyContin after government pressure. On the level of the street, addicts who find themselves too tolerant to the drug find their needs more than adequately met when they can buy many more hits of heroin for the same cost. Philadelphia-based writer Jeff Deeney outlines some of these fascinating
issues and more as he looks into how race, cost, manufacturing and distribution factors in OxyContin abuse invariably drive the addict to cheaper and more easily accessible heroin.
posted by Rothko
on Feb 2, 2006 -
72 comments
How to think about prescription drugs. Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in
The New Yorker
The emphasis of the prescription-drug debate is all wrong. We've been focussed on the drug manufacturers. But decisions about prevalence, therapeutic mix, and intensity aren't made by the producers of drugs. They’re made by the consumers of drugs.
posted by trharlan
on Oct 31, 2004 -
20 comments
Inventing a new disease? Some experts are saying that the drug industry is trying lump women’s sexual problems under the term “female sexual dysfunction” to create a market for lucrative new Viagra-like drugs. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association
[abstract] found sexual dysfunction is more prevalent for women (43%) than men (31%), but
the jury is still out.
posted by gottabefunky
on Jan 3, 2003 -
54 comments
