Having marketed adult diseases like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in 4-year-olds to death, pharma is now finding childhood diseases in adults. Adults with ADHD have hyperactivity, impulsivity, "executive function deficits" and "difficulty with organization and time management," says Harvard Medical School's Joseph Biederman, in a 2004 JAMA. The disease, found in most people's brother-in-laws, requires "lifelong" medication says Biederman, who was accused of pushing Risperdal and hiding pharma income by Congress in 2008. Adults may suffer from autism too says a 2008 article in Psychiatric News, if they're "unsociable, extremely rigid, given to angry outbursts" and "acutely sensitive to light, heat, and pain." Luckily, in two studies "SSRI antidepressants led to a decrease in repetitive behaviors and to somewhat more socializing," in adults with autism says the Psychiatric News.
Asthma That Requires "Two Drugs"
Leave it to pharma to develop an asthma drug -- the long-acting beta2-agonists (LABAs) -- that triples the rate of asthma deaths, especially in African-Americans. And leave it to the FDA to approve LABA's on the basis of a trial, the 2003 SMART trial (Salmeterol Multicenter Asthma Research Trial), that was stopped early because of so many deaths. In March, after more deaths, especially in children, a sheepish FDA recast LABAs as a last resort medication with or without use of a concomitant inhaled steroid. But AstraZeneca doesn't want to stop selling its LABA with a steroid, Symbicort -- and GSK its LABA with a steroid, Advair -- just because they're correlated with death. So the LABA drugs are being billed as safe and having "two drugs" to treat asthma (see: Vytorin) and projected to earn billions this year.
"Treatment Resistant" Conditions
If an engine additive or laundry product didn't work, who would chase it with another product --or two-- because the manufacturer told them to? Who would pay $300 to $900 a month out of their pocket for antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers and mood brighteners some of which don't work? (see: fear, forever, faith.) Increasingly, pharma is billing drugs as add on or "adjunctive therapy" like the antipsychotic Abilify in whose ads a patient says, "I'm taking an antidepressant but think I might need more help." Last year, the FDA approved AstraZeneca's antipsychotic Seroquel* for patients who "failed to respond adequately to an antidepressant alone" and Eli Lilly's Symbyax, a combination of antidepressant Prozac and antipsychotic Zyprexa (do patients gain 100 pounds but feel great?) for "treatment resistant depression." Why are diseases "treatment resistant" instead of the drugs "ineffective" or diagnoses "wrong"?
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