Lunesta: Golden or Bitter Pill?
The results are in! Lunesta wins both the DTC National Gold Award as well as Prescription Access Litigation (PAL) Project's "While You were Sleeping" Bitter Pill Award! (For more...
How Not to Influence Physician Bloggers
Nicholas Genes, a physician who publishes Blogborygmi, a blog he characterizes as a "digest of developments in the life of an emergency medicine resident" posted an April Fool's joke on his...
Spinning Bad News about FDA & Drug Safety
Peter Pitts, former spinmeister -- er... I mean Associate Commissioner for External Relations -- for the FDA and currently spinning for the pharmaceutical industry at Manning, Selvage & Lee, is also...
FDA Coming to a Mall Near You?
The FDA plans to interrupt about 1,800 "self-identified, moderately overweight" shoppers at malls to survey them on the content and format of the brief summary in direct-to-consumer (DTC) print ads, according...
Sepracor Sneaks In Lunesta Reminder Ad
Has Sepracor decided to sneak in one or two more Lunesta "reminder" ads on TV despite its announcement last year that it has "adopted' PhRMA's Guiding Principles for DTC advertising, which...
Restless Pharma Marketing
Yesterday I posted a commentary on "disease mongering" (see "Disease Awareness or Disease Mongering?") in which I mentioned Restless Leg Syndrome as an example. Jane Chin, a member of the PHARMA-MKTING...
Disease Awareness or “Disease Mongering?”
Recently, some pharmaceutical companies have stepped up their use of unbranded DTC ads whose messages focus only on the medical condition -- e,g., erectile dysfunction (ED) -- that the branded product...
DTC without Risk Revisited
On March 31, I posted a critique of the Coalition for Health Communication's (CHC's) petition to the FDA, the aim of which I said was "the elimination of specific risk information...
Merck Misled FDA According to NJ Jury
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Merck was ordered to pay $9 million in punitive damages to a man who had a heart attack while taking Vioxx. The verdict came after...
Rost to Roost in Blogosphere
For months I have been receiving "personal emails" from Peter Rost -- Pharma's Black Knight -- informing me of his latest trials and tribulations regarding his whistle-blower case against Pfizer. Rost...
