The Food and Drug Administration was given a spoof award last week for its failure to act quickly enough to protect the public from adverse drug reactions.
Massachusetts senator Mark Montigny presented the “asleep at the wheel award” to the agency at a ceremony in Boston, called the Bitter Pills Awards.
The “counter-awards” ceremony was held to coincide with an event sponsored by the drug industry, the DTC (direct to consumer) National Awards 2005, at which drug companies were given plaudits for promoting their products to the public.
In the satirical ceremony the FDA won its award for its “failure to police drug advertising” and its “collusion” with industry and politicians that “is costing Americans billions of dollars in unnecessary drug costs every year and exposing consumers to unnecessary risks.”
The awards function was sponsored by Prescription Access Litigation, part of the national consumer advocacy organisation Community Catalyst. Prescription Access Litigation has filed 20 class action lawsuits targeting high drug prices.
Other winners included Glaxo-SmithKline, the maker of paroxetine (marketed as Seroxat), which won the “cure for the human condition award” for “hawking pills to treat the trials of everyday life.”
Figure 1.
Awards included a “cure for the human condition award”
Judges in the “performance anxiety award” category, for products exploiting “male fears of inadequacy,” could not identify a single winner so awarded the prize to all three makers of “performance enhancing drugs” on the US market: Pfizer for its drug sildenafil (Viagra), Lilly for tadalafil (Cialis), and Glaxo-SmithKline and Bayer for vardenafil (Levitra).
Presenting the award, Michele Lee, manager for public education and outreach of Health Care for All, said she recalled advertisements for Viagra featuring the drug's blue “V” logo as devilish horns on a man's head and the tag line “Remember the one who couldn't resist a little mischief?” Ms Lee said dryly that she did remember that man, adding, “In my humble opinion, he was a jerk then, and he's still a jerk now.”
Dr John Abramson, author of Overdosed America: the Broken Promise of American Medicine, gave the “speak no evil” award to Merck, the maker of rofecoxib (Vioxx), and Pfizer, maker of celecoxib (Celebrex).
The two awards ceremonies were held simultaneously at the same venue, the Marriott Copley Place Hotel, which seemed to cause some worry. “There were swarms of nervous security guards,” said Alex Sugerman-Brozan, director of Prescription Access Litigation.