The miscellanious round-up, while I wait for the coffee to infuse my system enough to pack and wander my way towards the airport.

Pfizer Boldly Advertising Celebrex Again – but with a big ol’ warning about the risk of heart attack and/or stroke.

I took Celebrex for a year, maybe more, and have to admit it made my life a lot easier during that time. At the very bottom of the article, Michael Krensavage, a drug industry analyst at Raymond James, says “I would try an ibuprofen first.” Well, thanks Michael K – but I did, and I was taking like 10 ibuprofen a day, which is never good for the liver, and still getting no pain relief. One Celebrex later, and I could move without wanting to cry (this was back when my rotar cuff was torn).

All drugs carry risks and benefits. It’s up to you and your doctor (note: doctor, not pharmacist) to determine what the right drugs are for you.

And lest anyone think last weeks Bones episode The Graft in the Girl, was just more scary science fiction, Stolen body parts linked to patients’ illnesses; several lawsuits claim tissue transplants were infected with viruses and other germs. Four men, one of whom worked for a tissue provider, have been charged with carving up corpses and selling their parts without consent. And oh yeah, they’re diseased and old and damaged parts.

Quite literally the entire plot of the last Bones, down to almost the exact same name of the tissue company. Life, meet art. Art, meet life.

GlaxoSmithKline, Europe’s biggest drugs manufacturer, yesterday defended itself against accusations that it is turning healthy people into patients by “disease mongering” and pushing “lifestyle” treatments for little-known ailments. Charming, ‘cept I don’t believe a word of it. I’m actually having fun collecting a list of all the drug advert commercials I see – I figure it will make a nice column for The Daily.

I particularly love the line “It is easy to trivialise things when you don’t have them. If people did not want the treatments, they would not seek them.” …or, you know, people wouldn’t think about it being an issue if they weren’t told it was one. We spent a while talking about the concept of taught illness in my philosophy of medicine class last quarter. Perhaps I should interview Sara for the article, heh.

Wired has another take on the pill pushers, noting that although Novartis employs some of the most brilliant minds in the pharmaceutical research field, developing impressive leukemia fighting drugs like Gleevec, their fourth most profitable drug is Lamisil.

Lamisil treats toenail fungus. It’s not life threatening. It turns your toenails yellow. And for three months and about $850, you can cure it. And 10 million Americans have, or are trying. And yet, in those numbers, a very small percent have had what you might call a significant reaction to Lamisil – they’ve died.

And yet because of their effective marketing campaign, with Digger the Dermatophyte, a campaign costing them $236 million in three years, Americans are lining up to take a drug that only completely cures 38% of them.

That’s a pretty low cure rate for a mostly invisible (after all, most of us wear closed-toed shoes) fungal problem that does nothing other than making your toe nails yellow.

Can I market a new cure for toenail fungus? I’ll call it… Polimisil. It’s a simple treatment, involving the application of a tinted liquid substance that dries to the toenail, masking the originating colour of the nail. You get approximately 60 treatments per bottle, each treatment lasting about a week. And for this amazing cure, I’ll only charge you $40 a bottle! That’s less than $1 a treatment!

C’mon, you know you want to!

On the other side of the pharmaceutical fence, (wow, I’m just all big pharma lately), Genzyme won FDA permission to sell a new drug to treat Pompe disease, a rare inherited enzyme disfunction. One of the problems with big pharma is that since they are businesses, they have incentive to develop and produce drugs for common problems, like arthritis, so they can make lots and lots of money. Practically speaking, this means that rare diseases, like Pompe, are often overlooked, because there is simply not the client base that would justify the research and development costs.

In doing something right for a change, our government has developed an incentives program for companies developing treatment for these rare illnesses; in fact, that’s what Genzyme specializes in.