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Biotech / Medical : PFE (Pfizer) How high will it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brander who wrote (2891)	5/26/1998 10:09:00 AM
From: Doug Soon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9523

Brad, There seems to be a missing component to this statistic that is frequently mentioned, and that is time. Can you indicate what your rate of 20 deaths is based on, one day, one week or a month. As I recall the 6 deaths took place over about 6 weeks which seem extraordinarily low to me. Perhaps what we need is some input from some life insurance person with some actuarial data. Also, my guess is the majority of Viagra users would be in the >40 year old category with many >60. What further info can you shed on this? DS

To: Brander who wrote (2891)	5/26/1998 11:04:00 AM
From: johroh	Respond to of 9523

Brad, I am sorry I don't remember where I read the article, but it said the death rate for this age group was 335 per 1 million men. Viagra had 8 deaths in their clinical trials of over 100,000 men and none were related to the drug. This is a very insignificant number of deaths, especially considering the health status of the patients who would have been prescribed the medication (older often with major illnesses).

To: Brander who wrote (2891)	5/26/1998 12:34:00 PM
From: Doug Soon	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 9523

Brad, I dug up some stats on US deaths in 1992. They should be still representative today. Table B. Death rates and percent of total deaths for the 15 leading causes of death for the total population: United States, 1992 [Rates per 100,000 population]: Rank order Cause of death Rate Percent of total deaths . . . All causes..............................852.9 100.0 1 Diseases of heart ......................... 281.4 33.0 2 Malignant neoplasms, including neoplasms of lymphatic and hematopoietic tissues.... 204.1 23.9 3 Cerebrovascular diseases ................... 56.4 6.6 4 Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and allied conditions............. 36.0 4.2 5 Accidents and adverse effects .............. 34.0 4.0 . . . Motor vehicle accidents ................ 16.1 1.9 . . . All other accidents and adverse effects 18.0 2.1 6 Pneumonia and influenza .................... 29.7 3.5 7 Diabetes mellitus ......................... 19.6 2.3 8 Human immunodeficiency virus infection ..... 13.2 1.5 9 Suicide................................ 12.0 1.4 10 Homicide and legal intervention ........... 10.0 1.2 11 Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis......... 9.9 1.2 12 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis 8.7 1.0 13 Septicemia ............................. 7.7 0.9 14 Atherosclerosis........................... 6.6 0.8 15 Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period ....................... 6.2 0.7 . . . All other causes ...................... 117.6 13.8 My take of this is that all ages, all causes death rate is about .85% per annum. For a sampling of 1 million persons this equates to 8500 deaths per year or about 165 per week. Given that the representative age of Viagra patients is older my guess is that an all causes death rate would be somewhat higher. Either the reports of the Viagra related 6 deaths over 6 weeks is incomplete or Viagra is saving a lot of lives. eg. more couples are home in bed instead of getting into car accidents. I'm inclined to think that the story as we know it lacks a few important details. DS