Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9041

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: Journal Article

Minhas R.
Statin utilisation--recognising the role of the invisible hand.
Int J Clin Pract 2007 Jan; 61:(1):3-6
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17229171&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_DocSum

Keywords:
Publication Types: Editorial PMID: 17229171 [PubMed - in process]

Notes:

“Evidence alone is not enough to generate prescriptions in today’s healthcare
systems

There is no evidence base for the ‘lower is better’ approach in primary
prevention

In a state-funded healthcare system prescribing freedom is not a right but a
privilege that may rapidly become unaffordable

If you manufacture the biggest selling prescription drug in the world and
your main competitor patent expires, what do you do? This is the situation
facing the pharmaceutical industry in many fields. Looked at another way,
should we expect a publicly funded health service to be able to effectively
marshal its own resources? Where do patients fit in to this picture and for
that matter what about doctors?

The expiry of the patent for simvastatin in May 2003 in the UK and lately in
the USA (April 2006) appears to have provoked a tenacious response to shore
up the sales of alternative lipid-lowering agents…”