{"id":534,"date":"2005-04-08T20:25:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-09T00:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=534"},"modified":"2006-09-04T18:38:30","modified_gmt":"2006-09-04T23:38:30","slug":"blood-tar-and-coffee-grounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/blood-tar-and-coffee-grounds","title":{"rendered":"Blood, Tar and Coffee Grounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my secret identity, I’m the mild-mannered (okay, angry and abrasive) editor of a pharmaceutical business magazine. The big news in the biz this week was that the FDA “recommended” that Pfizer stop selling Bextra, a Cox-2 inhibiting anti-inflammatory in the same class of drugs as Vioxx and Celebrex. The move sucks for Pfizer, which bought Pharmacia for $60 billion a few years ago with the plan to use Celebrex and Bextra to build a Cox-2 powerhouse. Now it’s stuck with a bloated infrastructure, tons of redundant employees, and a business model that’s still predicated on the crapshoot of Pharma R&D.<\/p>\n

But why is the FDA calling for Bextra’s withdrawal? Well, it’s not for the cardiac events that led to the Vioxx disaster. The FDA just wants more data on that from Pfizer. Nope, the FDA withdrawal notice<\/a> cites, “Reports of serious and potentially life-threatening skin reactions, including deaths, in patients using Bextra.”<\/p>\n

That’s right: “life-threatening skin reactions”.<\/p>\n

Well, I couldn’t leave that<\/span> alone, so I had to find out exactly what sorta skin reactions can kill a dude. And then I found Stevens-Johnson syndrome.<\/p>\n

Sure, at the sound of it, Stevens-Johnson syndrome oughtta just cause you to break out in slacks or drive a Volvo, but it turns out the be one monstrously messed-up medical condition<\/a>. When the skin’s reaction is “sloughing off,” I understand where the “life-threatening” part comes in.<\/p>\n

Still, that wasn’t the weirdest thing that I came across in my little research. No, it was the FDA’s drug info page for Bextra<\/a> that wins that<\/span> award. Because the FDA wants us to know the following:<\/p>\n

Stop taking Bextra and call your doctor right away if you get: <\/p>\n

\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u00a2 a burning stomach pain <\/p>\n

\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u00a2 black bowel movements that look like tar <\/p>\n

\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u00a2 vomit that looks like blood or coffee grounds<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now keep in mind, that’s before<\/em> the serious issues with the drug arose.<\/p>\n

And you guys wonder why I don’t quit this day job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my secret identity, I’m the mild-mannered (okay, angry and abrasive) editor of a pharmaceutical business magazine. The big news in the biz this week was that the FDA “recommended” that Pfizer stop selling Bextra, a Cox-2 inhibiting anti-inflammatory in the same class of drugs as Vioxx and Celebrex. The move sucks for Pfizer, which … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Blood, Tar and Coffee Grounds”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharmaceuticals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-8C","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3689,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/too-big-to-fail","url_meta":{"origin":534,"position":0},"title":"Too Big To Fail?","author":"Gil","date":"March 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's my From the Editor column from the March issue of my magazine. Enjoy: Too Big To Fail? The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a deepening productivity crisis. The industry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preferred escape mechanism from this predicament has been to increase investment in current business activities \u00e2\u20ac\u201d primarily R&D and sales \u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":910,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-job-destruction","url_meta":{"origin":534,"position":1},"title":"More on Job Destruction","author":"Gil","date":"April 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last July, I wrote about the nuttiness of the American Jobs Creation Act, a one-time tax break for companies bringing overseas profits back to the U.S. (the tax rate on such earnings drops from about 38% to about 5%). Michelle Leder at Slate just wrote about the subject, calling it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1019,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/pfed","url_meta":{"origin":534,"position":2},"title":"Pf***ed","author":"Gil","date":"July 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry for the lack of posts, readers! I'm really busy on the home-stretch of that Top Companies special issue. Gotta finish the final profile today, so's I can head to the shore tomorrow without worrying about it. I decided to save the biggest one for last: Pfizer. As you may\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1233,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/pfailed","url_meta":{"origin":534,"position":3},"title":"Pfailed","author":"Gil","date":"December 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What a difference two days make. On Nov. 30, Pfizer gave an \"R&D open house\" event where it discussed its drug pipeline. The biggest drug in that pipeline is torcetrapib, a compound that raises \"good\" cholesterol. For years, Pfizer's been developing it as a combo-drug with Lipitor (atorvastatin), which reduces\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/drug-deal","url_meta":{"origin":534,"position":4},"title":"Drug Deal","author":"Gil","date":"April 28, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm on a press trip in Puerto Rico this week, as mentioned earlier, and it's been sorta tough to get any blogging done. The perfect sunlight tends to, um, make too much glare on the laptop's screen. Yeah, that's it.Anyway, this morning, before heading out to the beach from my\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1161,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/let-them-eat-tort","url_meta":{"origin":534,"position":5},"title":"Let Them Eat Tort","author":"Gil","date":"October 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"(here's the From the Editor column from my magazine this month) Sometimes, writing this column requires compulsive news-trawling, and my paranoid-detective method of reading people's quotes. It can be a painstaking process, involving market and biographical research, trend analysis, and interpretations of government health statistics. And sometimes there's a Vioxx\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}