With all the murky, muddy news that seems to be filling the media these days about the biotech/pharma industry, there are a couple bright points that have made me smile.
The first bright point (at least for us television viewers - Pfizer might not be as amused) is the FDA demanding that Pfizer pull its Viagra ads featuring the song "Wild Thing." It doesn't seem that the FDA is taking a page from Michael Powell's book at the FCC and is calling the ads racy; rather, Pfizer fails to clearly state that the drug is for erectile dysfunction and to list all of the drug's side effects in the ad.
The FDA's letter also claims that the ads suggest that Viagra is "better, more effective or useful in a broader range of patients" than their research has proved. By this, they just mean that none of the research that Pfizer submitted to the FDA shows that Viagra will bring about a return of the man's prior level of sexual desire and activity (and they invite Pfizer to please submit such data if it has it).
I understand the need to have ads that inform the public about what the drug will do and side effects to watch out for, but it's too bad when clever, fun ads like this are not allowed especially when we've all already traded a dozen high-school level jokes about erectile dysfunction, Viagra and priapism. Maybe Pfizer can just add on another 5-10 seconds of space at the end of the ad to say "now for the legal stuff ..." and let the ad run again.
And one last thing - thinking back to Super Bowl 2003, didn't Lilly ICOS run a bunch of ads for Cialis that sort of hinted that it might be a drug for erectile dysfunction or sexual dysfunction, but didn't make it clear what it was for, what its side effects were or who was even the intended patient group? Maybe that ad was just so vague that the FDA figured it didn't make any claims at all and there was no reason to send a similar letter to Lilly ICOS.
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