This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Dr. Marcia Angell, senior lecturer at the Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and author of the book The Truth About The Drug Companies, How They Deceive Us And What To Do About It reviewed on ThisIsMS here, was recently interviewed on NPR's Radio Open Source. You can find a discussion about the interview here and listen to an MP3 recording of the interview here.

NHE

NHE,

The interview lasts about an hour and is well worth the time to hear what the woman has to say about the pharma industry.

One thing which caught my attention is how companies are combining two old drugs to make a patented "new" drug. We are seeing this with the MS drugs now.

For example, Tysarbi was first trialed with Avonex, which if it had not killed people, would have made Biogen double the profits. Teva Pharmaceuticals is trying double dosing of Copaxone.

Teva is also behind the estriol trial at UC Irvine in which Copaxone is part of the hormone study. If the study shows positive results, Copaxone will be part of the equation, regardless of whether it actually helped with the estrogen therapy or not.

Robbie is right, we need more beer and mj.

gwa