(my post dinner response)
1. burp
2. I still think you would find reading their ad enlightening. The ad was read to me by an AGPH employee who was quite disappointed at the statements. After that happened, I posted on this thread that there might be a "brain drain", and then Agouron's director of research left for greener pastures. As one well known man once said, "Consider if you will", that my statements may be shared by others in the scientific community and that many people speak to me but are reluctant to post things on the internet. Although on occasion a post of mine may be a bit colorful or exaggerated if you get me excited - and you will get me excited because I really do not like to see exaggerations of claims for AIDS drugs - it makes me crazy/HIV is filled with tremendous issues of public health policy, etc etc. For example, you'll probably point out that many of those pills that HIV+ people take are for the opportunistic infections so even if Viracept halted replication, the patient would still not throw away all the pills. - well, I'm beating you to the punch, but my point should be well taken, that Viracept is used in a cocktail and cannot and will never do the job by itself, that the DURATION OF ITS EFFECTIVENESS may be extremely short, that using it for 1st line therapy is OK, since once the patient ceases to respond to it, he/she can move onto a more powerful combination using Crix (look at the phase 3 studies, it is implied)or in late 1998, a cocktail with the Vertex/Glaxo drug. Switching from Crix to Viracept is happening but scares the hell out of me, since if I am correct of the effectiveness of the 2 drugs (BTW, Vertex agrees with me, although they'd never put it in print), then switching from a more powerful cocktail to a less powerful cocktail is going to create much sadness when viral load rebounds and the patient stops responding to Viracept and finds that going back to Crix won't cut it. So, my dear friend, there are problems. HIV is one nasty little bugger. I am happy that Viracept is on the market. It's actually kind of funny, but if Agouron were only more honest in their promotion of the product, I probably wouldn't even be on this thread. The only other issue would be valuation, which is something, which once pointed out, can be decided on one's own. But the hype and misdirection is something that is like the Eveready bunny. Oh, and regarding Ms. Wang of Paine Webber who had a theory about a Jewish holiday affecting Viracept sales - yes, she is Orthodox, so I believe everything she says, thinks, and whispers. And I will never be sarcastic. Well, starting tomarrow. |
