Wednesday, July 16, 2008

An aside -- from CNBC's Mike Huckman -- on Schering's Levitra. . . .


Well, we all know that Schering-Plough earns some decent revenue from Levitra -- which, in the words of the above Mr. Huckman, is "an also-ran, me-too ED drug. . . ." Truer words were never typed.

It is what follows the-above comment, though, in his post, that most interested me:

". . . .But I do know one new Levitra convert. A certain co-worker, who will remain unnamed, recently told me he spent more than 300 bucks to fill a Levitra prescription his neighbor wrote for him. Mr. Anonymous said he'd grown frustrated with his primary care physician who would only write him tiny, apparently insufficient, prescriptions for Viagra. . . ."

Wow -- that seems like a dangerous recipe -- at least if it's all for one man -- perhaps his co-worker is looking to be an "off-license distributor" of erectile dysfunction (or, "ED", for short) drugs. Heh.

Let us (fairly) assume he isn't. A dosing at that sort of size might have profound cardio-vascular implications -- even for an otherwise-very-healthy young[er] man.

Now, what if the "anonymous co-worker" is a 40-something "weekend-warrior", whose primary care physician knows about a history of heart-disease in the family, or in the co-worker, himself?

No doubt this is a dangerous thing -- even if the "neighbor-Doc" admonished him to stay at the low-end of the daily-dosing on the label. Wow. What a sad "pill-poppin' public" story that makes.

Thanks for the candor, just the same, Mr. Huckman. This sort of thing needs more sunshine, not less. Seriously. Thanks.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The patient will probably claim that he's a sex addict. S/P should've restricted access to the drug....here comes the lawsuit.

Anonymous said...

Good points, to be sure, anonymous poster.

The oddest part of the story is that the friend paid $300 for a large bolus of Levitra -- couldn't the "neighbor Doctor" just simply given away samples, weekly, or over months, if the neighbor was behaving (at least marginally) responsibly?

The size of that scrip makes me cringe -- what ON EARTH was going on there?

Baffling.

Anonymous said...

I think your point of 'behaving responsibly' is the crux for both parties involved.

We could drag in the pharmacy as well. Why would they fill a Rx for that amount?

Anonymous said...

BTW: an on-line pharmacy (assuming that is where he went to fill his Rx) runs 30 pills of Levitra for ~300 bucks.

Maybe he'll get lucky every day for a month and wear himself out(?)