If you feel like everyone is warning you about your bones and imminent osteoporosis, you are right. Boniva, an osteoporosis drug which actress Sally Field says helps women "stop losing and start reversing" bone, is one of the top 20 most advertised drugs.
Bone drug Evista was personally promoted by former FDA deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs under George W. Bush, Scott Gottlieb.
And "novel" bone drug Prolia, also called a Frankendrug, received a Best New Drug award this month at the 2010 Scrip Awards ceremony.
While most of the world is now aware of the risks of osteoporosis, the problem with the bone drugs is: they may not work and you may not need them.
According to National Public Radio, Merck hired a company to whip up fears of "osteopenia," the risk of getting osteoporosis, to get women to take Fosamax, the first bisphosphonate bone drug launched 15 year ago. The hired guns creating the faux "Bone Measurement Institute," planted bone scan machines in medical offices and pushed the Bone Mass Measurement Act which made scans Medicare-reimbursable. By the end of the 1990s the "disease" of osteopenia had increased seven fold according to the Associated Press.
Even the term osteopenia, created by World Health Organization, was co-opted. It was never meant to be "a disease in itself to be treated," says Dartmouth Medical School professor Anna Tosteson who attended the WHO meeting, and the osteopenia diagnostic criteria were decided arbitrarily because the scientists were tired and wanted to adjourn.
Like Merck's Vioxx, Merck's Fosamax was launched ahead of schedule and its side effects -- esophageal erosion, bleeding, inflammation and perforation (why patients have sit or stand for an hour after a dose) -- only emerged when the drug was reimbur$able. In fact, Merck was forced to send out Dear Doctor letters months after Fosamax' 1995 approval and the FDA threatened to revoke approval altogether until Merck's head of research at the time, Edward M. Scolnick, convinced it to simply add a warning.
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