When Pharma Sponsors Drug Studies Pharma Always Wins

A fine article appeared in yesterday's Washington Post pointing out that, in multiple studies of atypical antipsychotics in schizophrenics, when Eli Lilly, say, sponsored a study pitting Zyprexa against Risperdal (made by Janssen/J&J) Zyprexa always came out ahead. And when J&J sponsored studies of Risperdal, then that drug was the winner. It's an article well worth reading. But it could've been improved in two small ways. One, by noting just how large the market is for atypicals--about $10 billion last year in the US, the fourth largest class of patented drugs in the country--and that 50 percent or more of the market for atypicals now comes from those with bipolar disorder, and there is very little independent/non-pharma data on the use of atypicals in treating bipolar disorder. That, too, sounds like news to me.