You Need To Read This Reuters Long Form Story: On Propecia® -- And Hiding The Evidence

We return to our original animating narrative arc, here -- for a fine expose on the Finasteride saga -- branded by mother Merck as Propecia^®. [Just one -- of dozens -- of my backgrounders, here.]

We still adhere to the view that perhaps more often than people realize, greater harms are caused by greedy life science executives -- greater than the ill they set out to "ameliorate". "Male pattern baldness" was made a target only after other indications for the drug turned up as. . . dry holes. But the sunk investment costs were not going to be allowed to fall to the bottom line, as a complete loss, according to Merck marketing mavens.

Indeed, do go read it all -- but it tells the story of what all those redacted court filings were all about [just use our "Search" box to see literally hundreds of them, search for Propecia, upper left], in the able Judge Cogan's Brooklyn federal district courtroom. Here's just a bit:

. . . .The redacted motion argues that Merck not only underreported the number of men who experienced sexual dysfunction while taking Propecia, but also concealed the duration of those problems. Citing the Merck analyst’s memo, the motion says that of the 23 study subjects who experienced sexual side effects during the last three years of the study, seven continued to experience symptoms when they completed it. The symptoms of nine others resolved after they stopped taking the drug, but the time it took was unknown, the motion says. And of the six men who dropped out of the study, it says, one still had symptoms at least 66 days after stopping treatment.

Merck didn’t know if some of these men’s symptoms resolved, Kaufman said in a deposition.

None of this data described in the plaintiffs’ motion was included on the revised 2002 label. Instead, Merck made a small but significant change to the label’s language: Symptoms stopped in “men” who went off the pills, the label now said, rather than “all men. . . .”

Do go read it all -- it is a compelling story -- of depraved. . . hubris. Indeed, how critical to human health is "ameliorating" the [naturally occurring] condition of. . . male pattern baldness? Seriously.

Yep -- onward, on another steamy late summer's sunny morning walk, to the trains. . . be excellent to one another.

नमस्ते