Some special interest groups are upset with Pfizer. Members of the Cut the Cost, Cut the Pain Network (3CPNet) recently appealed to the Intellectual Property Office in the Philippines for the cancellation of Pfizer's patent on Norvasc, which is used for hypertensive patients.
"Depriving patients of low-cost medicines deprives them of their right to live. This is what Pfizer has been doing through the years and it has to stop. Cancellation of Norvasc's patent is a step towards preventing multinational drug corporations of following a similar path and a means to reducing the high cost of medicines in the country," Edeliza Hernandez, Coordinator of Cut the Cost, Cut the Pain Network (3CPNet) said.
All of this is, for lack of a better word, baloney.
The antihypertensive market is filled with generic drugs that do an outstanding job of lowering blood pressure. No patient is deprived of their right to live because they can’t afford to buy an expensive drug like Norvasc.
Quite the opposite is true.
Norvasc is a calcium channel blocker, and this group of drugs may actually increase mortality, hence, is not recommended as first-line therapy in the U.S.. This is important since the whole idea of lowering blood pressure is to decrease mortality.
So the Philippines should be happy Pfizer makes it too expensive for many of them to take this drug. If they are truly interested in prolonging their lives, they should follow the recommendations of the “Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.”
That report is pretty clear: “Thiazide-type diuretics should be used in drug treatment for most patients with uncomplicated hypertension, either alone or combined with drugs from other classes.”
The good news?
Most diuretics are cheap generics.
- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.
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