Originally published November 27 2005
Big Pharma sales suffering from negative image
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The New York Times examines how recent scandals like Vioxx have damaged the credibility of the pharmaceutical industry and considers how a rise in generic drug sales and waning consumer confidence will impact an industry gone bad.
A year after Merck's withdrawal of its arthritis medicine Vioxx led to an industrywide credibility crisis, the Food and Drug Administration is blocking new medicines that might previously have passed muster.
Doctors are writing fewer prescriptions for antidepressants and other drugs whose safety has been challenged, like hormone replacement therapies for women in menopause.
Meanwhile, insurers and some states are taking advantage of the backlash against the industry to try shifting patients to older, generic drugs, arguing that they work as well as newer and more expensive branded medicines.
Overall, prescriptions continue to rise slightly, but an increasing share of prescriptions are going to generic drugs.
"I think there is an overall unreasonable expectation right now that there is such a thing as a risk-free drug," said Sidney Taurel, chief executive of Eli Lilly & Company.
The major drug makers remain highly profitable.
But at some, including Pfizer and Merck, the largest and third-largest American companies in terms of revenue, sales are stagnant and profits are falling, leading to layoffs and - for the first time in years - cuts in research budgets.
In the third quarter, United States sales of prescription drugs fell 3 percent at Bristol-Myers Squibb, 4.5 percent at Johnson & Johnson, and 15 percent at Pfizer.
At the same time, they have used consumer advertising to drive patient demand.
But those strategies appear to be losing their effectiveness, as consumers become more skeptical and insurers rebel against high prices for drugs that are not therapeutic breakthroughs.
For example, in June Pfizer began selling Zmax, an antibiotic that contains the same active medicine as Zithromax, which was introduced in 1992 and lost its patent protection last week.
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