When drug companies collide

We’ve got a real soap opera going here. And it’s getting nasty.

In several recent e-Alerts (see “Crashing the Market” 10/20/03) I told you about the launch of Crestor, the new cholesterol-lowering statin drug, manufactured by AstraZeneca (AZ). The execs at AZ have devoted millions to the worldwide promotion of Crestor, hoping to carve out a large slice of the statin market dominated by Lipitor, which generated $8 billion for Pfizer last year.

When you’ve got a market where a single brand can gross $8 billion in a year, it’s not surprising to see a dog-eat-dog atmosphere emerge. To say the least.

Two weeks ago, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet featured an editorial that roundly criticized AZ for rushing Crestor to market when the drug’s safety is still very much in question (according to Lancet editor Richard Horton).

AstraZeneca CEO Tom McKillop fired back with a blistering letter (published in the following issue of The Lancet) that defended Crestor’s safety record in clinical trials, and called Horton’s comments a “flawed and incorrect editorial.”

Showing restraint, McKillop didn’t mention that The Lancet might be considered something less than an impartial observer of the Crestor/Lipitor competition. Just two weeks before the Crestor-bashing editorial appeared, Pfizer sponsored an entire issue of The Lancet.

And can you guess what appeared on both the front AND back covers of that issue? Two ads for Lipitor.

The questions about Crestor’s safety are not new and have created headaches for AZ for more than a year now. But the widely-reported “Statin War” (as The Lancet referred to it) is giving Crestor more free publicity than AZ execs ever dreamed of.

And in the midst of this most recent skirmish, we’ve also had an insightful glimpse into the relationship between powerful drug companies and high-profile medical journals.

As a friend of mine used to say: “Stand back and let the big dogs eat.”

To Your Good Health, and Go Ravens!

Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute
Sources:
“The Statin Wars: Why AstraZeneca Must Retreat” Editorial, The Lancet, v. 362, no. 9393, 10/25/03, thelancet.com
“The Statin Wars” Correspondence, The Lancet, v. 362, no. 9394, 11/1/03, thelancet.com
“AstraZeneca Slammed over Crestor” Reuters, 10/23/03, reuters.co.uk
“Lancet Hit in Drugs Row” Paul Durman, The Times of London, 10/26/03, timesonline.com