Government auditors found some years ago that the price of Leucovorin calcium listed for $18.44. Medicare paid 95%, or $17.52, but some physicians bought it for $2.77. Marketing the Spread occurs when a drug maker uses the differences between the price paid for a drug by public health care programs and the actual cost of the drug charged to doctors as a tool for selling products. The GAO reported that the 86% Spread for Leucovorin meant that a Medicare beneficiary’s co-pay alone would actually be more than the physician paid for the drug.

Xeloda (capecitabine) offers fewer side-effects and 85% less time with the doctor or at the hospital. Again, would a clinical trial to show when drugs are selected with and without the presence of profit differential, clinical outcomes would be the same? Most oncologists use injectable treatment because they are more profitable than oral therapies, and remains an important source of income for their practices. Is this better for the patient?

Xeloda is proving much more convenient, has fewer side effects, and has shown it is giving colon cancer patients a better chance of surviving the disease. Yes, Xeloda is more expensive than Leucovorin, but Leucovorin can more renumerative for the oncologist.

If people’s lives were not at stake, I’d say,”Don’t make me laugh.” Like all other cancer patients, the lives of colon cancer patients are *totally* in the hands of their oncologists, and that is what oncologists want and insist on. They want their patients to be totally dependent on them. Specifically, they warn their patients not to “stray”, i.e.,not to be taken in by nutritional “quacks” and “quackery”. They say this even though
they are almost completely ignorant of the vast, documented, scientific literature on nutraceuticals vs. cancer.

The comments below are addressed to colon cancer patients, but similar information is available for cancer patients in general.

If you want to exercise a modicum of intellectual independence and control over your life:

The non-inclusive list below is one of nutraceuticals which have been documented in the medical literature to have anti-colon-cancer activity. You can verify this statement by first going to the link to the National Library of Medicine, or Medline,
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/gw/Cmd

and in the “Search” box, entering in (two examples):
“colon cancer ellagic acid” or
“colon cancer Vitamin D”, etc. (Leave out the quotation marks.)

A partial list of safe, non-prescription, readily-avaialable anti-colon-cancer nutraceuticals:

propolis
quercetin (in onions, apples…)
ginger
phytic acid (in grains)
CLA (or conjugated linoleic acid)
aged garlic extract (or AGE)
green tea
EGCG (in green tea)
ellagic acid (in berries)
Vitamin D
folic acid
tart cherries
flaxseed lignans
grape seed (available as a powder)
lycopene (in cooked tomatoes)
tocotrienols (in wheat germ)
N-butyrate
berberine
L-carnitine
I3C and its metabolite DIM (in broccoli)
gamma tocopherol(in NATURAL Vitamin E)
lutein
MSM (methyl sulfonyl methane)
omega-3 fatty acids (in fish oil)
rice bran (stabilized only)
milk thistle
turmeric and curcumin
cranberries
phaseolus (mung beans)
cocoa
resveratrol
black raspberries
selenium
Vitamin B6

I’m a retired chemistry professor and have no commercial interest in any of these nutraceuticals. You are welcome to contact me at pbrudnick@yahoo.com

Philip Rudnick

I guess the writers at the Washington post haven’t been reading this website. BMS is getting rid of 20% of staff. Wyeth chopped 10%. Merck 10%. Pfizer - who knows - at least 10%. Those layoffs don’t include the “shift” of resources from US sites to sites in India/China. I believe that at last count Ed’s running total was in the range of 80,000 jobs being lost in the pharma industry over the last year or so. (note that the entire “big-three” in Detroit employ about 200,000)

I certainly do not consider pharma to be the “bright spot” of the American economy.

Even if we do allow preemption etc. these companies are still outsourcing manufacturing to India and China (along with R&D). Preemption won’t change that.

Plus if preemption passes it’s the taxpayers who are stuck with the bills for paying for the health care of all the people being maimed.

I certainly want a strong and vigorous US pharmaceutical industry, however I don’t want the US to be left with a mess and the bill with almost nothing in return.

To REALLY ensure supplies, price supports (yes, EVEN FOR GNERICS!) would be needed (if we are to follow the logic, such as it is, here)– NOT some goofy return to OVER-priced branded compounds — with endless exclusivity periods.

Namaste.

The shortage of this one drug is lamentable, but it is no more evidence of a VAST a pardigm-shift, than the suggestion made, by PhRMA — last week, in trupeted press-releases — that Pharma is now *closely-allied* with the new, incoming Administration on how to improve access for all Americans.

It. is. simply. not. true. at. all.

[PhRMA is all about getting "theirs" -- FIRST!]

Said in a more cryptic form, “the singular form of the word ‘data’ — is ‘anecdote’. . .”

Cheers!