Six ways Big Pharma manipulates consumers - Salon

This article originally appeared on AlterNet. The blockbuster pill profit party is over for Big Pharma. Bestselling pills like Lipitor, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singular and Concerta have gone off patent and sites which their ads sustained are withering on the vine. WebMD, for example, the voice of Pharma on the Web, with a former Pfizer exec serving as CEO, announced it would cut 250 positions in December. But don’t worry, Wall Street. Pharma isn’t going to deliver disappointing earnings just because it has little or no new drugs coming online and has failed at the very reason for its existence. Here are six new Pharma marketing initiatives that are guaranteed to keep investor expectations high along with our insurance premiums. The secret? Recycling old and discredited drugs and marketing diseases to sell the few new ones. 1) Repurposing Ritalin Now that Pharma’s succeeded in getting five million children and four to eight million adults diagnosed with ADHD, it’s looking for new markets for the drugs. One new use for Ritalin (methylphenidate), the grandfather of ADHD drugs, could be for eating disorders.Researchers say a woman who suffered from bulimia nervosa, bipolar I disorder, cocaine and alcohol dependence, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and panic disorder “achieved a sustained (>1 year) remission” when methylphenidate was added to her other drugs. Then there’s pregnant women. A new paper suggests that taking away a women’s methylphenidate duri...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs