PhRMA has released a report of more than 300 drugs in the pipeline for psychiatric medications.
Many are in the initial stages. Some, such as Johnson and Johnson's injectable Risperdal, represent a different mechanism of action for a drug already on the market. About one-third are in development to treat dementia, with the others in different stages of development to treat depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders or eating disorders. Others represent new areas of research, and the expansion of marketing into areas such as sleep disorders, where 21 drugs are in all stages of development.
"Mental illness, including suicide, accounts for more than 15 percent of the burden of disease in established market economies, which is more than the disease burden caused by all cancers," write the authors. The role of drugs to treat them has been increasingly discussed or debated. They are among the industry's most profitable and many of the block busters are going off-patent in the next year or two.
This document arrives at the time PhRMA is battling a blizzard of bad publicity about psychiatric drugs that cause collateral organ damage, hiring ghost writers to pen scientific studies, and conflicts-of-interest in medical education and continuing education. A new CEO, John Castellani, replaces Bill Tauzin, former member of the House of Representatives, who moved from legislating about health care to lobbying for PhRMA.
Let me get this start; in the 1950's Drug makers cam out with Thorazine, perfected from insecticide. By the the 1970's it was discovered that Thorazine never was affective at controlling symptoms. People given it stopped complaining about their symptoms only because the side effects, which was the effects of insecticide poisoning, was worse than the MH issues that they where given it for. So then in the 70's they came out with the so called new generation psychiatric medications. By 2007 the CATE came out with the findings that the newer medications where no more effective at controlling symptoms than the older generation of medications. Recently it has been discovered the only effect that any of the so called psychotropic meds is in their placebo effect. So hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly tax dollars, have been spend on psychiatric medications that where no more effective than sugar pills. Not surprising that Big Pharma is scrambling to come up with something so save their markets.
Posted by Chas93101 | August 12, 2010 7:40 PM