Searle Expands Program for Poor : Industry Skeptical About Plan to Provide Heart Medicine

G. D. Searle & Co. kicked off its 100th anniversary Wednesday with a splashy 10-city media promotion of a company plan to give away millions of dollars in free drugs to needy patients.

Searle executives appeared on the “Today” show. In Atlanta, it was “G. D. Searle Day.” In Washington, Howard University Hospital officials joined the Skokie, Ill., drug company’s director of marketing for a press conference.

But the plan was met with almost immediate skepticism from others in the industry, who suggested that the firm--which has lost $238 million in the past two years and recently has been rocked by allegations about the safety of its intrauterine contraceptive device--is trying to pass off a marketing gimmick for some laggard products as an act of charity.

“Most of their drugs are off-patent and haven’t been doing too well,” said Sam Isaly, a drug-industry analyst with S. G. Warburg & Co. Inc. in New York. “This is a discounting promotion.”

$30 Million in Charity

Searle, a subsidiary of Monsanto Co., plans to give away its full range of heart disease drugs--which represent about 70% of its product line--for the treatment of any patient who is not covered by any type of medical insurance. Doctors will be given prescription certificates by the company to pass on to needy patients, who will redeem them at pharmacies.

Searle officials said the plan--which adds five products to a giveaway begun last year for the firm’s best-selling anti-angina and hypertension drug, Calan--could amount to about $30 million in charity this year. Searle would be able to deduct the production costs of the products from its taxes.

“We at Searle believe that no patient should do without any life-saving medication because he or she cannot afford to pay for it,” Searle Chairman Sheldon Gilgore said at a Chicago press conference.

Competitors and industry analysts called the giveaway an attempt to curry favor with doctors for a line of drugs that, with the exception of Calan, face declining sales in the largest and most competitive sector of the drug business--treatments of heart disease and hypertension.

Two of the treatments to be given away, Aldactone and Aldactazide, are in a class of heart drugs that recently fell out of favor with some cardiologists.

“Neither is on the first line of drugs for hypertension. They’re not drugs that I would start someone on for high blood pressure,” said Alan Wasserman, an associate professor of cardiology at George Washington University.

Norpace, another of the free drugs, is used to treat irregular heartbeats. “It has definite but limited use because of some major side effects,” Wasserman said. “There are other anti-arrhythmic agents that we are using first.” Sales of the drug, according to industry analysts, fell last year.

Another of the major drugs on the Searle giveaway list is Nitrodisc, a through-the-skin patch for the treatment of angina. The efficacy of this procedure has been called into doubt by some cardiologists, but the market for the drug is large and hotly contested.

‘Useful Program’

“They’re giving away second- or third-choice drugs to poor people,” said Sidney Wolfe, who heads the Public Citizen Health Research Group, a Ralph Nader group. “The poor deserve better than that.”

In other quarters, however, the plan was greeted warmly.

“I think it will turn out to be a very useful program,” said Otelio S. Randall, director of the hypertension section at Howard University Hospital, who accepted a $75,000 prescription redemption certificate from Searle on Wednesday.

“I see a fairly large number of people who don’t make enough money to afford $60 to $100 a month on drugs,” he said. “There’s no doubt doctors are going to get familiar with these drugs. The name will become well known, and Searle is going to benefit. But this is a pretty good way to benefit themselves, isn’t it?”