Unbranded disease awareness TV ads are a goldmine for Pharma

Two years ago, the FDA approved two drugs for Tardive Dyskinesia (TD), Ingrezza and Austedo, which explains the unbranded TV ads and web sites. Like other unbranded marketing, TD ads and websites omit mention of any drug names but urge people to see their doctors and describe all their symptoms, as unpaid Pharma salesmen. Web sites even offer a “discussion guide” to make sure the patient says the right things and sells the drug for Pharma.

Why object to a treatment for TD if it works? First of all there is price. Ingrezza would cost $752,080 a year and Austedo, $1,100,773 based on Quality-Adjusted Year Life measures, says Managed Care magazine. Other extortion-priced drugs from Pharma include the cancer drug, Kymriah which cost $475,000 per patient, the immune drug Actimmune, which costs $52,321.80 for one month and the gallstone drug Chenodal which costs $42,570 a month.

While Pharma claims its new six- and seven-digit priced drugs reflect “research,” the prices are pure profiteering—an offer sick patients and their clinicians and insurers “can’t refuse.” Meanwhile Pharma won’t develop drugs that are sorely needed such as antibiotics for resistant bacteria—even when our tax dollars are handed over to do it. Why? Because there is no money in it.

Here is a second reason for outrage. Why doesn’t Pharma develop an antipsychotic that doesn’t cause TD to begin with instead of creating another add-on drug? The answer is obvious. Add-on drugs double Pharma’s money while hiding the fact that the first drug has debilitating side effects or is not even working. This is how people end up on expensive and dangerous drug cocktails that are almost impossible to discontinue.

Unbranded disease awareness TV ads have been a goldmine for Pharma and broadcast media. The only loser is the patient.

Before TV drug ads, doctors tried to reassure patients they were probably fine. Today, drug ads and online “symptom checkers” do just the opposite. The most insidious are “unbranded” ads that scare people about a disease without mentioning that they are selling a drug for it.

Often the diseases are ridiculously rare like exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, shift work sleep disorder and non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder. But Pharma has a drug and it needs to create patients and “sufferers.”

Unbranded advertising works well because many people think it is official information from public health groups like the CDC. Even TV and radio stations can be duped and run unbranded Pharma advertising free as “public service announcements.”

The latest unbranded disease “awareness” campaign is for tardive dyskinesia (TD), a constellation of involuntary movements, often permanent, linked to antipsychotic drugs. Unlike non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder and the like, TD is a widespread, consequential condition adding to the stigma endured by people with severe psychiatric conditions.

TD has become more common, even among the young, as second general antipsychotics (SGAs) like Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify, Risperdal, Saphris and Invega are marketed for nonpsychotic conditions like autism, bipolar disorder, conduct disorders, ADHD, anxiety and depression. SGAs were largely approved because they didn’t seem to cause TD compared to older antipsychotics. But they did and do—they were just rushed to market too soon.

Pharma’s business model, with a cooperative FDA, is to rush a drug to market while its “long term safety is studied” reducing the public to guinea pigs. Then when “safety signals” surface—think the withdrawn Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Meridia, Seldane, Hismanal, Darvon, Raxar, Redux, Mylotarg, Lotronex, Propulsid, Prexige, phenacetin, Oraflex, Omniflox, Posicor, Serzone and Duract—the drug has still made money, even if lawsuits follow.

Martha Rosenberg is a freelance journalist and the author of the highly acclaimed “Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health,” published by Prometheus Books. Check her Facebook page.