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

To: BigKNY3 who wrote (18723)	2/12/1999 5:05:00 PM
From: VLAD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23519

Kahuna, Once again you completely miss Dr. Wolfe's point. The point is that he doesn't want people to have a false sense of security jumping on the COX inhibitor bandwagon. There currently is no solid proof that drugs such as Celebrex do NOT block prostaglandin syntheses in the gastric mucosa. There is no solid proof that COX2 doesn't exist in the stomach and is seen found only in areas of trauma etc. Pure hype and speculation. Wolfe doesn't want to see people who were sensitive to NSAID start taking Celebrex like candy thinking that it wont block protective protaglandins in the stomach mucosa. It is good that we have guys like Sidney Wolfe to neutralize guys like the Big Kahuna. If you had it your way the big pharmas should all be allowed fast track approval of any drug so long as they can tell us all a nice story. You are only concerned about big pharma selling massive amounts of pills to the public so that they make big money and your big pharma stocks all go up. It is sad but true. I personally feel that the COX2 inhibitor drugs are just another big pharma scam where they are looking for something special or different to hype to the consumer so that they can take a nice cut into the over-the-counter pie. Eventually the COX2 drugs will be on the drugstore shelves right next to the various trade names for aspirin, ibuprofin and acetaminophen. They all basically work by the same mechanism ie blocking the production of prostaglandins which are the "mediators" of pain. Kahuna, if we use your logic about drugs such as aspirin, then we can go even one step further and say that drinking water should be banned because if you drink too much at one time it can create a severe dilution of your physiological electrolytes and it can kill you. Or we should say that people should not drive cars since there are over 40,000 deaths annually in car accidents. The lines of common sense need to be drawn somewhere. Please answer the following questions for me as honestly as possible: 1)Why didn't Pfizer include the at risk group(men with CVD) in their phase III clinical trials on Viagra? 2)Do you feel that Pfizer made an "honest" mistake and was unaware that most men with organic impotence have CVD? 3)Why did the FDA allow a non life saving lifestyle drug such as Viagra fast track approval while other drugs that were designed to alleviate more severe diseases which create pain and suffering have to wait one year or longer before getting FDA approval? 4)Once Pfizer realized that a disporpotionate number of men were having coronaries, why did Pfizer not take the SAFEST action and voluntarily black box Viagra to inform physicians to avoid using it in the CVD patient until further studies could prove or disprove safety in this particular group? 5)Why after over 200 deaths and thousands of coronaries later hasn't Pfizer been willing to announce that they are going to commit R&D to a double blind study of Viagra on this at risk group? 6)Are there currently PROVEN safer ED therapies on the market for ED patients to use? IMO it all boils down to ONE thing which is MONEY! And it is so very sad that Pfizer put MONEY and corporate greed ahead of the safety concerns towards using Viagra in the CVD segment of ED groups. I bet that if you didn't own stock in Pfizer and a close relative or friend used Viagra and died you would be singing quite a different tune about what went down with Viagra. C'est la vie.