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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: blankmind who wrote (18106)	1/24/1999 7:47:00 PM
From: VLAD	Respond to of 23519

blankmind, There is no doubt that the Viagra story is the result of big pharma's political influence in Washington via campaign contributions and all sorts of other forms of political back rubbing which IMO is nothing more than pure bribery. Look at the history here: 1)Pfizer is proven to have donated 100's of millions to political campaigns and is the fifth largest spender on Washington lobbyists. 2)Pfizer is granted fast track approval for a life style drug and is not even required to test the at risk patient pool which is well known to compose a large percentage of the organic ED cases. 3)The Public Citizen's Group publishes its report on its survey of Medical Advisors. Viagra is specifically pointed out as one drug in particular that was rushed to approval without proper screening of safety concerns. 4)Pfizer and the FDA consistantly maintain that Viagra is perfectly safe as long as it is not used with nitrates. After the accumulated death toll reported domestically goes from 69 to 130, the FDA bends a little and tells Pfizer to change the label. The new labeling tells doctors to use Viagra with caution but does little in the realm of admitting that the drug has serious side effects in the CVD group of ED patients. Pfizer's new label reads more like an excuse sheet which tries to explain that the deaths were due to the stress of sex and not Viagra. Vivus' own study shows that men using MUSE show no increase in coronaries over placebo thus totally disproving the Pfizer theory that the deaths associated with Viagra are related to the stress of sex. The FDA's own estimates claim that adverse effects are probably reported only in 1 to 10% of the cases. This means that the actual number of deaths linked to Viagra use might be anywhere from 1,300 to 13,000. The lawyers can only sit on the side lines for so long before realizing that they are sitting on a litigation gold mine.