Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18347

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Electronic Source

Silverman E
Silencing Critics Of A Pricey Gout Drug
Pharmalot 2010 July 7
http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/07/silencing-critics-of-a-pricey-gout-drug/

Full text:

Here’s a lesson in social media. A number of rheumatologists are battling with URL Pharma over its new Colcrys med for treating gout, which is essentially a version of a very old drug called colchicine. Specifically, they complained about pricing on an online message board, and the drugmaker’s general counsel responded by sending letters to some docs about the “potential risks and liabiilty” of using unapproved versions, The Wall Street Journal writes.
URL Pharma didn’t threaten to sue, but warned the docs their comments expose them to liability lawsuits from injured patients. “These are shake-down letters to silence” critics, John Goldman, an Atlanta rheumatologist, tells the paper. He criticized URL in his postings for conducting limited research and for its pricing of Colcrys.
In a rather benign response, URL tells the paper it wrote the docs to educate them about its clinical trials and help them prescribe the drug appropriately, not to silence them. URL also insists it wasn’t targeting the message-board members, but did send letters to 150 doc who “mischaracterized unapproved colchicine as being safe or legal” in opinion pieces and elsewhere. “We were trying to alert this small group of misinformed physicians to the fact that they were being led into medical malpractice liability,” URL tells the paper. (You can read more on the URL web site).
URL charges about $5 a pill compared with just pennies for colchicine. Why? URL says clinical trials were expensive and the pricing is comparable to other gout treatments. Ed Herzig, a Cincinnati rheumatologist, wrote that one patient learned that a 90-day supply of Colcrys would cost $550. “What chutzpah!” he wrote, the Journal reports. Ed Fudman in Austin, Texas, encouraged docs to urge the FDA to allow unapproved colchicine to remain on sale. In March, the FDA issued a letter in response to complaints about pricing, but so far, the agency hasn’t taken any regulatory action to remove unapproved colchicine pills from the market as part of a 2006 initiative. Meanwhile, URL has also sued several colchicine makers for illegal marketing.