Low T
Men are you feeling run down and over the hill? Is your hair falling out, skin wrinkling and abdomen developing its own zip code? Have you lost interest in sex or worse, has your partner? (With you?) Do you need reading glasses, dental implants and heel splints? You're not getting old, you just have Low T and are ready for the aging-is-really-just-low-hormones con that women have lived with for 60 years: hormone replacement therapy. Like 50 million women before you, you can be Forever Masculine even though, to (quote hormone giant Wyeth) you have outlived your testes if you start replacing your lost testosterone. You'll get both kinds of zips back in your life, and it won't change your prostate-specific antigens. Pharma promises.
"Spectrum" Disorders
Nothing proves pharma's when-the-medication-is-ready credo better than the legions of people who have fibromyaglia now that Cymbalta, Savella and Lyrica are available to treat it. Still, a "grassroots" pharma front group is conducting a Fibromyalgia Is Real awareness campaign like it did for depression and bipolar disorder, just to make sure. Pharma has also rolled out the term "depression spectrum disorder" for fibromyalgia to make sure patients who have some but not all of the symptoms seek treatment. And speaking of spectrums, "Epilepsy Spectrum Disorder" was rolled out in January's JAMA -- a disorder which is not just about seizures anymore but has "shared mechanisms" with "depression, autism"and other cognitive comorbidities." Spectrum disorders are Real--which is pharma for Reimbursable.
* a pharma contrivance like "perimenopause" to widen the patient pool
**this week AstraZeneca agreed to pay $520 million to settle Justice Department allegations it illegally marketed Seroquel and paid physicians to act as authors for ghostwritten articles. Don't the FDA and Justice Department talk to each other?
An earlier version of this article appeared on alternet.org
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