Quotes about Pfizer from the world's top natural health / natural living authors
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 "During trial studies researchers noticed that it had a positive effect on erection, which turned out to be stimulating news for pfizer. The drug was patented in 1996, approved by the FDA on March 27, 1998, and became the first pill approved for the treatment of erectile dysfunction in the U.S.
Viagra works because it inhibits the cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) phosphodiesterase type-5 (PDE5) enzyme, thereby increasing blood flow in the corpus callosum of the penis and causing an erection. Viagra has its peak effect in one hour and lasts about four hours."- J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) |
 "However, the site does mention that the two nonprofit organizations participating in this educational initiative have a number of "corporate partners," namely AstraZeneca, Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Merck/Schering-Plough, Monarch, Novartis, pfizer, and Wyeth.
When corporate partners fund the flow of information, the message is likely to accentuate treatment strategies that are in their interest and downplay those that are not. For example, fewer than one-third of the diabetics in the United States get adequate exercise."- John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "The consultants discovered that most doctors simply weren't aware of this research, and weren't aware that Cardura ought not to be their first choice for the treatment of high blood pressure. So pfizer simply kept quiet. The American College of Cardiology (ACC), however, responded to the findings published in the JAMA article by issuing a press release, posted on its website, recommending that doctors "discontinue use" of Cardura. But within hours, the ACC downgraded its warning, recommending only that doctors "reassess" their use of Cardura. What happened?" - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "At the time the study was published, there were two potential changes coming that could have provided commercial incentive to do so. pfizer had a new "HDL-elevator" drug that was well along in the pipeline of drug approval, and already being tested in clinical trials. It was also becoming clear that senior citizens would soon get some kind of assistance with prescription drug coverage from the federal government. Lower-income minority communities like Harlem represent relatively unpenetrated markets for expensive drugs with purported widespread benefits." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Bear in mind that pfizer contributes more than $500,000 each year to the ACC. The next round of results from the ALLHAT study came out two years later and contained more bad news for the manufacturers of brand-name blood pressure medicines. Again the low-cost diuretic was shown to be equal to or better than the higher-cost drugs—this time a calcium channel blocker (Norvasc) and an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor (Zestril and Prinivil)." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) |
 "In 2001, the Associated Press ("Drug Firms Turn to Celebs: Spots Blur Line between Ads, News") reported how celebrities are paid to mention specific drugs in media interviews: "In one campaign, former gymnast Bart Conner was paid to discuss how he was treating his osteoarthritis with Celebrex, made by pfizer . . . [but] ABC's Good Morning America did not make clear that Mr. Conner was paid. Todd Polkes, a spokesman for ABC, said his operation was unaware of the relationship. pfizer also has paid Julie Krone, a former female jockey who retired last year, to promote Zoloft, an antidepressant."- Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.) |
 "Jones explained, "because as I understand it, we learned that another company—I think it was pfizer?had rented a naval aircraft carrier in New York harbor for a major reception for psychiatrists, and we wanted to do something to counter that."
Mr. Jones said the companies were providing far more to physicians than mere entertainment. Most of the leading physicians in the various medical specialties, he said, were now paid consultants to one or more pharmaceutical companies. "The reach goes very, very far," the former executive said. "- Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) |
 "As I discussed in the text, a "subcommittee" constituted by the American College of Rheumatology recommended coxibs (American College of Rheumatology Subcommittee on Osteoarthritis Guidelines 2000) as did the "International cox-2 Study Group," composed of multiple consultants to the industry and supported by "unrestricted educational grants" from Searle, pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson (Lipsky et al. 2000). The lead author of this paper went on to a stint as a senior administrator in charge of extramural research programs for arthritis at the National Institutes of Health."- Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) |
| "That meant pfizer could thank the illegal plan for most of the ten billion dollars the company had earned from sales of Neurontin since it had taken over Warner-Lambert in 2000.
No Warner-Lambert executives or the physicians they paid were indicted. And much of what Warner-Lambert did to promote Neurontin for experimental uses remains common practice in America's medical system. The drug companies continue to pay physicians to promote their corporate products for them. And many physicians continue to rely on the drug companies to support their lifestyles." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) |
| "This statement upset the makers of Viagra so much that pfizer spokeswoman Janice Lipsky told Times reporter Gardiner Harris that Levitra had benefited from "false claims and public relations in which they inaccurately state that Levitra works faster and is better, neither of which is true." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) |
 "While the Boomer Coalition sounds like a grass roots group of health activists, it is actually a creation of pfizer, manufacturers of Lipitor? "We're always looking for creative ways to break through what we've found to be a lack of awareness and action," says Michael Fishman, a pfizer spokeswoman. "We're always looking for what people really think and what's going to make people take action," adding that there is a stigma about seeking treatment and many people "wrongly assume that if they are physically fit, they aren't at risk for heart disease."- Dr. David W. Tanton; Ph.D., A Drug-Free Approach To Healthcare, Revised Edition (Get the book.) |
| "Based on this finding the trial was immediately halted, and pfizer withdrew its application to the FDA for approval of Torcetrapib. The lesson from Torcetrapib is that just because medications have actions that we think should be helpful (like raising HDL cholesterol), that doesn't mean they necessarily will be. In the case of statins, lowering LDL cholesterol is not always associated with lowering mortality or even in some cases heart attack risk.
Again, 13 million Americans take statins each year." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) |
| "Marketing infused every aspect of a drug's development at pfizer, according to the company's executives. Marketers decided what projects the scientists would continue to work on. Once the medicines were approved, marketers directed scientists to perform additional studies that could be used for new promotional claims and slogans." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) |
 "In response, Merck withdrew Vioxx from the marketplace; pfizer, maker of Celebrex, did not. At that time, annual sales of Vioxx were $2.5 billion; Celebrex, the seventh most prescribed drug in the United States (21 million prescriptions in 2003), had sales of $3.3 billion per annum.36
The story actually began in the 1980s, when scientists studying cancer discovered a naturally occurring substance (COX-2) that contributed to inflamation and cell proliferation."- Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "The panel's endorsement of both drugs will definitely help Merck and pfizer fend off the hundreds of lawsuits already filed by patients and their survivors." The panel's chairman, trying to put the whole debacle in perspective, made the unfortunate comment: "It would be a brave man or woman [physician] who started a patient with a clear history of heart disease on these drugs."48 "That's not brave," complained Fran. "It's either incompetent or negligent.!" What are the lessons of COX-2 Inhibitors for our book? We live in a hypermodern society. Everything happens at breakneck speed." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "On these two points, both pfizer and the jury agree?'' Whatever their effectiveness, one thing is sure: SSRIs are used more than ever to treat depression in children and adolescents. Between 1995 and 2002, "drug mentions per physician visit" grew by only 29% among the elderly, and faster for each younger age group; for young people— age 18 and under, use of SSRIs increased by a whopping 124%. Even after the controversy began over suicide, sales continued to increase." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "We repeat two scientific findings: first, COX-2 inhibitors really do hospitalize and even kill people; second, amazingly, they are no better at relieving pain than over-the-counter medications, a finding which was published a full year before the pfizer CEO's rhapsody.49 THE AMERICAN PHARMACY Remember the millennial article in the New England Journal from the first page of this book. "Medicine is one of the few spheres of human activity," wrote the Journals editors, "in which the purposes are unambiguously altruistic." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) |
 "Pfizer made a short industrial film, The Relaxed Wife, that aimed explicitly to encourage doctors to think of the stressed businessman as a target for treatment with minor tranquilizers. Filled with strategically humorous images (e.g., a businessman with a head literally about to explode under pressure), lots of talk about the tensions of corporate life, and the importance of learning to relax, the film managed to promote its anxiolytic product, Antarax, without using the word "anxiety" once."- Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.) |
 "And it's not just the CEOs: in 2000, the average unexercised stock options of the top executives at Merck were $73 million; at Bristol-Myers Squibb, $65 million; at pfizer, $54 million; at Eli Lilly, $33 million.5
Even after the woes that Big Pharma experienced between 2004 and 2007—the withdrawal of Vioxx from the market, the loss of half of the injectable flu vaccines because of quality control problems, and a growing public awareness of profiteering and an all-too-cozy relationship with the Bush administration—no one should worry unduly about the industry's fortunes."- Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "In 2003, the chief executive officer of pfizer, Henry "Hank" McKinnell, sat in his corner office in midtown Manhattan. McKinnell was paid $9.7 million a year in earnings143 and ultimately received $200 million in retirement and deferred compensation.144 It was raining outside, and McKinnell was feeling blue. "We're the industry and the company that nobody loves," he said. "I'm just kind of puzzled at how we got here." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "One can only imagine the marketing spree the big drug companies would go on if they were to come across a pill with similar proven efficacy to, say, cognitive-behavioral therapy. pfizer, Lilly, et al. would unleash a blizzard of commercials on the airwaves. A drug that halves suicide attempts! A drug that reduces criminal recidivism by a third! A drug that cures people of phobias! We would never hear the end of it. The problem is there's no money in it. Psychologists, social workers, and researchers tend not to be the best marketers in the world." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "The initiative came about as a result of gifts from pfizer, Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Procter & Gamble, and Wyeth-Ayerst.90 While the public, historically, has been innocently unaware of these details, they are starting to get wise. In the public's view, the pharmaceutical industry has recently joined the oil industry as the most exploitative and reviled sector of corporate America. The perception of manipulation and arrogance on the part of Big Pharma is starting to stick. A trust factor appears to have been violated." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) |
| "Celebrex (or celecoxib, the generic name), marketed by pfizer and Pharmacia, is a COX-2 inhibitor still on the market in the U.S. In 2000, a large review of the drug, called the Celecoxib Long-term Arthritis Safety Study (CLASS), which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reported a 50% reduction of ulcers and stomach bleeding with celecoxib as compared to NSAIDS.7 Patients taking aspirin lost the protection afforded by Celebrex. This study looked at one year of treatment, but only the results found after six months were published." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.) |
 "As a result, Pfizer's shares soared from $45 to $115 in 2004. Viagra substitutes came on the market: herbal Viagra, cheap Viagra, Viagra online, Viagra alternatives, you name it. Viagra, originally approved as an impotence pill by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1998, isn't only used today by people with erectile dysfunctions; one can find it in sex shops and in marital-aid catalogues. It is a chic, fashion pill; people even pretended to have erectile problems to get Viagra prescriptions."- Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.) |
 "Pfizer ran an ad in a popular magazine for its anticholesterol drug Lip-itor that showed the tagged toe of a corpse above a headline urging women in their fifties to get their cholesterol checked. Of course, the ads glossed over the possibility that Lipitor itself might kill them. Then there are the so-called feel-good ads, which aren't intended to make patients feel better, but rather to encourage drug company employees, stockholders, and legislators to feel good about the beneficial work a company is doing."- Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "In 200c, pfizer was ordered by the FDA to put a warning on its Viagra labels that the drug can cause irreversible vision damage, and in rare cases, blindness. Saying Viagra treated a disease also allowed advertisers to quietly appeal to the public's desire for self-improvement and -enhancement—while simultaneously pretending the drug wasn't really about improving anybody's sex life. Viagra was for a disease, not for wild, all-night sex." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) |
| "In September 2005 a class-action lawsuit was brought against pfizer, alleging that the company engaged in a massive campaign to convince doctors and patients that its statin, Lipitor, is beneficial treatment for nearly everyone with high cholesterol ?despite the lack of evidence in major segments of the population and the puny evidence discussed above in middle-aged men. Several organizations have tried to dampen the enthusiasm. For example, the American College of Physicians weighed in on the debate on cholesterol screening and treatment in 1996 with conservative guidelines." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) "Pharmacia (the Swedish pharmaceutical firm that was to be swallowed by pfizer) and Merck were breaking new ground in the escalating tendency of the pharmaceutical industry to market at the very edge of veracity. This is the impression one gets from the content of their numerous sponsored professional symposia, the dinner talks by "thought leaders," their advertising in professional journals, and their direct-to-consumer advertising. Direct-to-consumer (dtc) advertising has an interesting history." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) "Health Plans and various others against pfizer, the manufacturer of the industry-leading statin Lipitor, which had worldwide sales of $10 billion in 2004. The suit alleges "violation of State unfair and deceptive trade practice laws... arising from the marketing of the brand-name drug Lipitor" for indications for which there is no scientific support. This will not be the first time that the plaintiff's bar has used the mechanism of a class-action suit to hold the pharmaceutical industry more accountable (Kesselheim and Avorn 2007)." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.) |
| "If pfizer was having a dinner at a really nice restaurant, you had to come up with [Green Bay] Packers tickets—and a bus to the game," she says. As reps upped the gift-giving ante, doctors began feeling entitled to increasingly luxurious favors. In an online chat room, one rep reported that a doctor asked him for money to build a music room in the doctor's house; another said she was asked to cater a doctor's daughter's wedding. An "unrestricted grant" from Gene Carbona paid for a doctor's swimming pool." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) |
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