wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Excedrin users have had an extra headache recently – finding a bottle of their favorite over-the-counter painkillers.

On today’s Underreported, directors Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher talk about the people who serve as human test subjects for medications being developed by pharmaceutical companies. They look at how those medications are being marketed, sold, and used throughout the United States after they’ve been approved. It’s the subject of their documentary, “Off Label,” which is being shown at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Beryl Lieff Benderly discusses the potential dangers of relying on double-blind clinical trials, which she sees as damaging the chances for patients in dire need of getting treatments. She also talks about why she thinks too many researchers are looking at what placebos aren't doing, as opposed to what they are. Her latest article, "Head Games," is in the current issue of Miller-McCune.

Kathleen Sharp details the bitter war between pharmaceutical giants Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, and their attempts to push a “miracle” drug by using financial kickbacks to doctors, bribes and Medicare fraud, and using patients as guinea pigs. In Blood Feud: The Man Who Blew the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever she tells the story of Mark Duxbury, a J&J sales rep who became a whistleblower. The case is now unfolding in a federal court.

It was supposed to help pregnant women deal with their morning sickness. But when the women who took thalidomide gave birth they were confronted with a horror story. Children were born with a birth defects and other problems that could be fatal. It was 50 years ago the drug Thalidomide was withdrawn after it became clear it was causing serious and sometimes fatal harm to the unborn babies of thousands of women in Europe and around the world.

The 10 million Americans who take Lipitor to deal with their high cholesterol are about to get some good news. The 20 year patent on the blockbuster prescription drug expires Wednesday, creating an opening for other companies to manufacture cheaper, chemically identical generic versions of the drug. Two companies have products coming out on the market to entice the 3.5 million users of Lipitor away. But Pfizer, the makers of Lipitor − which derives almost a fifth of its revenue from $11 billion in sales of the drug — has its own plan for keeping patients on the name brand.

On Friday, the FDA ruled that cancer drug Avastin should not be used to treat breast cancer because Avastin’s risky side-effects outweigh its benefits for breast cancer patients. "Women who take Avastin for metastatic breast cancer risk potentially life threatening or serious side-effects, such as heart attacks or heart failure, severe high blood pressure, bleeding or hemorrhaging," FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said. 

Katherine Eban discusses her article “Oxycontin: Painful Medicine” in the November issue of Fortune magazine. Two decades ago opioid sales were a small fraction of today’s figures, bu in recent years, doctors have started prescribing these powerful painkillers more commonly, and addiction to them has skyrocketed. Eban looks at what the strange saga of Purdue Pharma—and its $3 billion drug, OxyContin— tells us about our national dependence on painkillers.

Harriet Washington explains the “life patent” gold rush and why she thinks it will have harmful, and even lethal, consequences for public health. The United States Patent Office has granted at least 40,000 patents so far on genes controlling the most basic processes of human life. In Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself—and the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future she examines the legal, ethical, and social bases for pharmaceutical companies’ position that such patents are necessary.

Charlie Ornstein and Tracy Weber, lead reporters of ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs project, relaunched this month, talk about their investigation into how much pharmaceutical companies are spending to train and ultimately influence doctors about their products. They discuss how much is being paid, why there are payments at all, the issues these payments raise, and how many doctors in New York City are getting money.

Peter Elkind, Fortune editor-at-large, and Jennifer Reingold,  Fortune senior editor, discuss the inside story of revenge, betrayal, and power at the top of Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company. Their article “What Happened at Pfizer” is the cover story for the August 15 issue of Fortune.

After an emotional and tense two-day hearing in Silver Springs, Maryland, federal advisers voted to revoke the approval of the world’s top-selling cancer drug Avastin as a treatment for women with advanced breast cancer. The Food and Drug Administration’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee heard from patients who say Avastin is a miracle drug, and from cancer advocates who point to adverse side-effects in other users. Finally, the committee concluded that research showed that the drug, which costs $88,000 a year per patient, failed to significantly extend patients’ lives or their quality of life. 

Vanity Fair contributing editors Donald L. Barlett and James Steele talk about the rise of pharmaceutical testing overseas, where it’s cheap and regulation-free. In “Deadly Medicine,” in the January issue of Vanity Fair magazine, they look at the issues this latest step in globalization raises.

Thousands of physicians all over the country get paid by pharmaceutical companies to speak about brand-name medications. Some have made more than $300,000 in speaking fees in the last 18 months. And at least 1,500 of these speakers are licensed in New York.

This list is based on data released by ProPublica on Oct. 19, 2010. They identified 384 health providers who earned more than $100,000 total from one or more of the following seven companies that have disclosed payments in 2009 and early 2010: Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Cephalon and GlaxoSmithKline. ProPublica says it matched the payee records with licensed doctors and registered nurses. When a match could not be found, for example when a recipient was a pharmacist, ProPublica used other sources to confirm their identities. Read more about how ProPublica compiled this information here.