No healing in sight for ailing drug industry

Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration were already expected to take a more cautious approach about new drug approvals in the wake of Merck & Co.'s withdrawal from the market of its pain reliever Vioxx because it doubled patients' risk of heart attack and strokes. Pressure on the FDA increased at yearend when Pfizer Inc. announced that a study of its pain drug Celebrex showed it had similar problems at high doses. The two products are in the same class of drugs, known as cox-2 inhibitors.

Questions still linger about whether Merck muzzled negative news about Vioxx in order to keep selling the drug. But the combination of problems with Vioxx and Celebrex is certain raise more questions about the safety of the drugs sold in the United States.

Drug makers already are struggling with growing generic competition and lackluster prospects for new medicines now in the pipeline. Some analysts believe further industry consolidation is likely because expense reductions resulting from mergers might be the key to increasing earnings at a time when revenues are stagnating.

Besides the debacles at Merck and Pfizer, Chiron Corp. got a black eye earlier this year when products from the British plant where it was to produce half the country's flu vaccines were blocked by safety officials. Plus the industry was buffeted by revelations that drug companies had stifled negative clinical trial data from studies examining anti-depressant use in children.

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