More Videos
SPECIAL REPORT
- U.S. Stocks Fall on Dubai Worries
- Black Friday at Best Buy
- Strategists on Dubai: Avoid 'Rash Moves' Now
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Dubai Stock Market Fear Has 'Legs': Dennis Gartman
- Obama's Emission Reduction Pledge Paints Future for Autos
- Is Super Bowl Halftime Act Too Old?
- Surprising Options Trades in TiVo Shares
- EA Sports Hopes to Pump Up Sales Through Pop-Up Locations
- Dubai's Debt Woes Signal New Era for Creditors
- Next Week: Cash In Now Or Wait For A Santa Rally?
- Fed Audit Would Hurt Economic Prospects: Bernanke
- Dubai Stock Selloff May Bring Buying Opportunity
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Big US Banks May Be Forced to Raise Capital: Bove
- Bank of America Amends Pay for Senior Executives
- Dubai Fallout Is a Correction, Not Another Crisis: El-Erian
- Tiger Woods Out of Hospital After Accident
PHARMA'S MARKET VIDEO
RSS FEED
Pharma's Market
Text Size 
 |
CNBC.com |
Researchers looked at all sorts of cardiovascular medications including cholesterol fighters, also known as statins. The top-selling statin--the top-selling drug in the world, for that matter--is Lipitor from Pfizer [PFE
Loading...
()
]. The pill rakes in around $13 billion a year, but sales growth has stalled since Zocor from Merck [MRK
Loading...
()
]went generic and companies, doctors and insurers started putting more patients on the cheaper alternative. The new JAMA study, which included clinical trials of generic Zocor, could presumably spur that trend.
PhRMA the drug industry's main lobbying organization, put out a statement late yesterday on the JAMA study saying, "The contention that brand-name medicines drive up the cost of health care is fatally flawed. Without today's innovative brand-name drugs to legally copy, there would be no generic drug industry. Worse yet, there would be little hope of finding new treatments and cures for a wide range of debilitating--and often deadly--diseases."
You expect a group like PhRMA to take a defensive position. That's its job. But I was surprised when this press release from Pfizer popped up in the inbox this morning (see link below) only hours after the JAMA study came out.
The communication touts the results of another study being published in "Mayo Clinic Proceedings" showing that Lipitor works 13 percent better than generic Zocor in preventing heart attacks, stroke, etc. The senior VP of Pfizer's global medical division, Dr. Michael Berelowitz, is quoted as saying, "The latest analysis adds to the wealth of real-world data from a number of different medical database analyses that suggest that patients who are treated with Lipitor may have a reduced risk of experiencing a cardiovascular event compared with patients who use simvastatin."
Simvastatin is the scientific, generic name for Zocor. And to drive home the point, the Dr. Berelowitz statement finishes with, "Findings such as these should be taken into account by those who may assume that medicines in a therapeutic class are interchangeable and provide similar outcomes."
That's an interesting opinion to be voiced so close on the heels of a much more prominent JAMA study that draws the exact opposite conclusion.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes