BIG PHARMA'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET
BY
KATHLEEN DEOUL
(X of XII)

Given these facts, it would make sense for the medical community to push diuretics, but that doesn't seem to be happening. There's too much money at stake for Big Pharma to give up their hypertensive drug cash cows.

For example Pfizer's Norvasc, which sells for around $172 for a month's supply was projected to earn the company $4 billion in 2003, and that's just one example. Like Norvasc, most of these drugs, regardless of class, cost around $175 for a month's supply. With tens of millions of new potential customers, Big Pharma is not about to give up its market without a fight.

One of their latest tactics is to simply stop manufacturing diuretics.

Doctors in Norway recently protested Merck & Co.'s decision to stop making Dichlotride, the only pure form of hydrochlorotiazide (the most commonly used thiazide) available. There is no generic alternative available on the market. Although Norway's situation is unusual in having no generic alternative, it is not apparently unique, as several other European countries have reported difficulty in obtaining the thiazide diuretics as well.

Although the problem has not yet spread to the United States, can there by any doubt that what Big Pharma is really doing in Europe is testing whether it can get away with suppressing a cheaper alternative to its expensive and ineffective anti-hypertensives? Can there be any doubt that they will do the same thing here if they believe they can get away with it?

Not if you know Big Pharma!