For years now we have been hearing about how consumers banded together to sue Pfizer, the maker of both Bextra and Celebrex, over dehabiitating side effects, misrepresention of what these drugs could do to relieve many conditions and deaths. The giant law firm of Hagens Berman has made progress in it’s aim to reimburse individuals who have spent too much money on these matters.
On October 17th 2008 the entire matter was finally settled with Pfizer finally agreeing to pay 87 million dollars to those enrolled in the suit. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a plethora of lawsuits regarding these two drugs and against this pharmaceutical giant.
The lawsuit was over a misleading ad campaign which claimed that it was a superior drug to all other types of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The problem with this claim is that the drugs had no measurable superior effect when compared to equable less expensive drugs.
Hagens Berman also filed suit on behalf of consumers who purchased the drug Celebrex, claiming Pfizer failed to tell consumers of serious side effects including risks of blood clots, heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular problems.
According to marketwatch.com, the drug company made a lot of money from these claims and those with lawsuits want their money back. From 1999 through 2003, Pfizer spent more than four hundred million on direct-to-consumer advertising for Celebrex, creating $2.29 billion of profit. As a single drug it accounted for over five percent of the company’s total sales… Bextra, originally approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and menstrual pain in women, to $139 million in the third quarter of 2002.

In the past few years there has been a wild search to try and find a brand new drug that will cure and prevent the bird flu and finally the big pharmaceutical companies are linked together in a way that allows them to consistently communicate with each other. These types of computing grids are the speediest and most efficient ways to discover new leads to drug molecules that might help protect against the bird flu.

According to a press realize in the online version of Science Daily there has been collaboration of European and Asian researchers to try and come up with a drug together against the deadly bird flu virus. A new grid computing program has been invented to harness the combined power of more than forty thousand computers ohms research labs across forty five countries to hasten the pace of anti-viral drug discovery.

Called Enabling Grids for E-science, the computing grid strings thousands of ordinary PCs together to form a super-sized supercomputer that is being used during this challenge to analyse the potential of more than 500,000 drug-like molecules. This mass effort is necessary to step up the development of a prescription or even an over counter drug to manage the effects of bird flu in individuals.

This new invention is hot on the heels of new data released last week b they Peking University in Beijing, China. It shows that the H5N1 bird flu virus can pass easily through the placenta of pregnant women to the fetus, and can infect organs other than the lungs in adults. A rapid response to any pandemic outbreak of the virus would be essential to keep a tragedy of unprecedented proportion in check.

New molecules can inhibit the activities of the influenza virus and this computer system helps doctors from across the world find them. Since the grid forts went into effect it is estimated that over 200 molecules have been found that might have the potential to cure the bird flu

There was a bit of hitch in the research and development by Genelabs to develop a new hepatitis drug but according to Chemistry World the day is saved because  Chemistry Lab Genelabs Technologies in a deal worth thirty seven million with GSK.

The development of the world’s first hepatitis E vaccine is currently in Phase II clinical trials and although it is rare in the western world it is endemic in developing countries where it is spread through contaminated water or food at an alarming rate.

All in all there are five different kinds of hepatitis that range from Hepatitis A through to E. Each type differs in how serious is it but there are also many different treatments in development for these problems and almost all of them are by Genelabs. The HCV virus affects about 170 million people worldwide with Hepatitis C being the main offender. Hepatitis C is manageable with a vaccine as well and Genelabs is also in development with many different types of inoculation for that.

The company’s portfolio also included vaccines against hepatitis B and A as well as two antiviral medications for hepatitis B.

The good news about the takeover by GSK is that it will allow research to be continued on all of these drugs by Genelabs Technologies but especially that very rare form of hepatitis called hepatits E. The intention of the drug research for most of these new prescription products is to develop something more effective than the current drugs for hepatitis which are based on a mixture of interferon and ribavarin. The problem with the current standard drugs for this is that they are estimated to be only effective 50% of the time. A drug that works half the time to manage a disease is better than nothing but so much more can be done to improve the quality of life of individuals who have contracted the chronic forms of this disease.

According to Science Daily online there has been a lot of research activity last March at Duke University in the United States with the intention of developing a vaccine for the bird flu. The point of what is known as “the Dukes study” has always been to measure the different strengths of vaccines.
The Duke study has been going on for seven months in collaborating with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. Also participating in the study are the University of Maryland, the University of Rochester and Baylor College of Medicine.
Scientists are adding a compound called an adjuvant to the vaccine which is basically a component that strengthens an immune response to smaller doses of the vaccine. The idea is that if the smaller dose stimulates immunity against the virus, then more people could be immunized with existing supplies if a worldwide epidemic of the bird flu takes place.
The Duke bird flu vaccine is designed to protect against the H5N1 strain of bird flu that has infected poultry in Asia, Europe and Africa and killed over one hundred people so far. Initial trials in healthy adults showed the vaccine was safe and that it did produce an immune response. However researchers consider the vaccine to be too weak as the immune response is mild. It requires high does and at least two inoculations to be effective.
Like the ordinary flu vaccines given yearly in the U.S., the H5N1 vaccine causes the body’s immune system to make antibodies to fight infection. In previous studies with this vaccine, two doses were necessary to stimulate antibodies. The doses needed to trigger antibodies were also much higher than necessary for other types of flu so attempts to produce that stronger vaccine are the point of a study currently being done on 150 people.

At StoptheDrugWar.org, a pro drug website, there is a very interesting article about the use of prescription medical marijuana by parolees and probationers. It is interesting because it has ramafications on what a drug based on a herb can be called. In this case the herb is marijuana and the synthetic prescription drug is Marional (also sometimes called the “marijuana pill” even though technically that is not what it is at all.

The case grew out of an instance with a man named Timothy Nelson who grew the marijuana for a health condition and then was banned from smoking it by prescription as part of his jail sentence. He was only allowed to smoke a synthetic version of marijuana called Marinol.

Tim Nelson’s lawyers appealed and it went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found that the ruling by the first judge clearly violated the desires of all the voters in Montana who had voted that a qualifying patient with a valid registry and I.D. be legally allowed to grow and consume marijuana in legal amounts.