As I said, my experience was 20 years ago. At that time, we read and we freaking consumed studies. I know I did. There was nothing… absolutely nothing… worse to me then being caught being biased. People lives were on the line and most that I associated with took that damn seriously.
I highly doubt if you want any modicum of credibility, even today, that you wouldn’t not only read but be able to comprehend a study. Not only from the parameters of what consists of good study but to be able to define what is a bad study.
There is truth in this. It was evident when I was a pharma rep. even back then. There were a couple of new drugs launched and I urged caution…based on what? Yeah, the gold standard of review. Yet, a lot of doctors jumped on the bandwagon only to be bit in the ass by it.
I don’t doubt that you did read the studies. My point is that the Drs rely on Reps like you to provide them with the results of the studies. They rarely take it upon themselves to do so. I can’t really blame them, many just don’t have the time.
About 20 years ago was when Fen Phen had caused so many injuries. There were tens of thousands of people hurt by that drug. Since then there have been literally hundreds of drugs that have caused injuries and given rise to massive lawsuits. Almost every one of them are sued for “failure to warn”. This almost always means that the Pharma company knew of side effects that they either didn’t warn the public about or downplayed the risks.
Gilead (Truvada) will be in litigation very soon. There has been a cheaper drug kept off market for some time now. The other drug has less side effects. You will soon see commercials by lawyers that will be looking for people that took this drug and suffered from kidney disease and bone density loss. They are about to lose a large part of their marketshare.
I’m glad you brought this up. I often wonder how much this type of litigation affects the cost of these drugs. It seems inevitable that serious or fatal side effects are part of almost every drug, so do all these drugs become targets of litigation? And if so, wouldn’t these companies bake that cost into the price?
It depends. In some cases a company that is trying to get to market first has an incentive to manipulate the data of their studies. In other cases, the manufacturer becomes aware that adverse reactions occur at a higher rate that they originally thought.
Litigation for these cases often takes years. A lot of internal communication comes out over that time.
