September 22, 2007

Another from Pharma Giles

Go and take a look at what he has on offer!!

One small prick...


Phoni, a major contributor to the University of Louisiana Hans Anderson Fairy Tales and Clinical Trials Centre, and two of its researchers are promoting studies of its Windasil HPV vaccine in boys "to expand profits from the vaccine's use."

The two researchers, Dr. Erich Von Dinosaur and Dr. Paul Chipolata, provided the Phoni-sponsored argument for vaccinating boys with the HPV vaccine in an upcoming article in the popular pharmaceutical journal, “Bad Science For Good Marketing”

They claim in the journal that "changing sexual practices such as more frequent oral sex in adolescents and young adults could possibly contribute to a slight increase in HPV-associated cancers. And that’s good enough for us to recommend pushing Windasil onto adolescent boys, even though the safety profile is unproven and boys don’t get cervical cancer anyway…”

Indeed, although the Windasil vaccine is being offered to males in Australia, Mexico, there is, as yet, no clinical proof that it works to prevent HPV infection in men.

"We have no data to confirm efficacy, and we won’t have any in the near future,” says Dr. Paul Chipolata, “but when did lack of clinical evidence ever prevent researchers like me, with financial ties to Phoni, from making unsubstantiated claims? The best way to reduce cancer-causing HPV is to widen the pool of children vaccinated with Windasil. There you go, see? Easy, isn’t it?" Windasil may generate more than $3 billion in annual sales for Phoni, analysts say.

Phoni expects to have data on use of the vaccine in teenage boys next year, a spokesperson said. The Windasil vaccine can already be used in boys in the European Union, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Costa Rica and Korea.

“All places that don’t matter to us in the US should reports of adverse side-effects start coming through,” Chipolata notes.

Approved in June 2006, Windasil generated $800 million in sales during the first half of this year.

Head and neck cancers are the latest malignancies tied to HPV infection generating attention from Phoni-sponsored health experts who have been paid to recommend broader use of the Phoni vaccine. Every year, about 650,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with head and neck cancers, and 350,000 die from the diseases, according to the American Cancer Society, based in Atlanta.

However, a May 2007 editorial in the New Dworkin Journal of Medicine has raised questions about the vaccine's effectiveness and safety profile. The report has documented over 16,000 adverse reactions and several deaths linked to Windasil. Among those reactions, about a quarter were classified as serious.

The journal also notes that cervical cancer has declined by more than 74 percent in the U.S. since the 1950s and today accounts for less than 1 percent of all U.S. cancer deaths. The cervical cancer/papilloma virus vaccine also may not bring about a significant decline in cervical cancer mortality rates in the U.S. because so many women undergo early detection of precancerous lesions and surgical hysterectomy.

“OK, so we’re marketing a vaccine with a marginal safety and efficacy profile against a low incidence disease that’s on the wane anyway, and yet we’re trying to justify expanding that market,” says Rich Pillager, President of Phoni Global Marketing.

“So what’s new? We’re looking at a potential $3 billion a year here. That’s a lot of buckets, and we’re not gonna let a few minor adverse reactions like deaths get in the way of that, are we? We’ve never done in the past and we aren’t gonna start now!”

“It’s one small prick for mankind, one gigantic leap in profits for Phoni. Ker-ching, ker-ching,” frothed Pillager.

Not entirely unrelated tales from the parallel universe of reality can be found here and here...

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