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

To: DaiS who wrote (19285)	3/7/1999 6:52:00 PM
From: BigKNY3	Respond to of 23519

Dais <<If you agree, then it would appear that Vivus share price might be influenced positively either directly by an increase in muse specification or indirectly by anything that reduces viagra specification which then reduces demand for viagra which then increases demand for muse and muse specification.>> Dais: Your post shows some excellent logic. However, without field representative support, the probability of success for a pharmaceutical product in the US is limited...even when competitors may be having problems ....Thus, previous correlations will not work in reverse. BigKNY3 PS I still have never posted on the Yahoo! Attack Boards and never will.

To: DaiS who wrote (19285)	3/7/1999 7:59:00 PM
From: VLAD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23519

DaiS, As a fellow Vivite mentioned to me earlier today: Try to look at Vivus as a freight train without an engine. We have the freight(MUSE) but no engine to pull it to market (marketing partner). All I see is Leland in his clown outfit trying to pull the train on one of those little pump carts. As Kahuna just pointed out, not a whole lot matters(at least domestically) if nobody is out there marketing and promoting the product. Viagra could be pulled off the shelves but if the PCPs don't know about MUSE what difference would it make? It might get back patients lost to Viagra but how can it generate new patients if the guys writing the prescriptions don't know about it? We need new patients trying MUSE. This can be those that didn't like the side effects of or failed on Viagra or those at risk patients concerned about safety. Since the introduction of Viagra last April we have never seen any sort of significant rebound in new MUSE scripts. We went from 10,000 new scripts in March of 1998 to under 3,000 in 6 weeks and we have not had more than 2,400 new scripts since the begining of May 1998. To me this suggests that there was never any substantial number of patients who tried and failed on Viagra who progressed to trying MUSE as a second alternative. I believed(falsely so) that enough PCPs were familiar with the product that they would educate the patients who requested Viagra that if it failed there was another non-needle alternative(MUSE). This evidently never happened. Zebra's little survey amongst his collegues found that only one in eleven knew what MUSE was. The fact that is remarkable is that we really don't need that many total scripts to see a nice profit. If Astra only saw a 19% decline in quarterly product income in England and still was not detailing the PCPs then with PCP education they probably can increase sales to a higher level than was seen in Q3 1998. If the same can be applied for the USA then we should easily be able to get scripts up to preViagra levels. But it won't happen without that needed engine.