Thursday, June 14, 2007
BLOGSCAN - Pfizer Trumpets Good News About Lipitor, Whispers Bad News
On both Pharmalot and the Wall Street Journal Health Blog are posts about how Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug company, trumpeted the 14% superiority of its cholesterol lowering drug Lipitor (atorvastatin) over generic simvastatin based on an observational study, then recently very quietly filed a statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of all places noting that the original findings were incorrect, and that Lipitor did not show a statistically significant advantage over simvastatin.
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2 comments:
Wow . . .
I have been - cynically yet not unseriously - throwing out my recent realization/observation - "Pharma owes a higher duty of disclosure to the SEC/investors than the FDA/doctors/patients" - for a while now but did not expect it to be validated quite so clearly.
Morris,
As a long time Wall Street Journal reader I can tell you, you are correct. For years we have seen SEC disclosures about adverse trial studies or adverse legal issues affecting a drug company due to their income projections. Elidel comes to mind as it was advertised up until two weeks before being pulled from the market. A piece on Zelmac appeared in the WSJ about it being pulled from the Swiss market long after being removed from the US, and the list goes on.
I am only saddened that we in the business community have better information than you in the medical community and making a dollar takes precedents over protecting patients health.
Steve Lucas
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