A few weeks ago, we posted on the curious persistence – and size -- of propaganda for Vytorin, the combo cholesterol drug that’s efficacy went the way of its clinical trial results – into thin air – after a panel of cardiologists rendered its cholesterol-lowering powers null and void at the American College of Cardiologists meeting in March.
But Gary Giorgio, MD, a doctor of emergency medicine in Akron, Ohio, said it better than we could have in this letter to the editor of the Akron Beacon-Journal, which ran two full-page Vytorin ads like the ones we saw in the Globe.
“The ads follow fast and furious on the heels of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed no benefit of the combination drug in reducing plaque,” Giorgio wrote.
“Given these facts, why would any intelligent physician prescribe this medication? Is it because industry-tainted guidelines keep pushing for lower and lower cholesterol targets despite a lack of evidence that this is beneficial? Is it because pharmaceutical giants Merck and Schering-Plough, which stand to make billions more dollars if patients are switched to or kept on Vytorin, have duped physicians and their patients? You be the judge.
"If you're taking Vytorin, maybe, as the ad suggests, you should be talking more to your physician.”