One Nation, Under Pills

Consider the following bits of recent news.

Drug manufacturer Eli Lilly will be the big beneficiary of a strange addition to the homeland security bill passed by Congress last month. The clause protects Lilly from lawsuits filed by parents of autistic kids who blame the drug company for manufacturing an ingredient in vaccinations that they believe caused the condition in their children.

More drug news: A Westside doctor lost his license this month after he was accused of writing medically unnecessary narcotics prescriptions for Winona Ryder, Courtney Love and others.

And still more: A report this month from the General Accounting Office details how drug company advertising, often quite misleading, has gotten us to buy more prescription drugs.

Question: How are these things related? Answer: They all speak to our increasingly intimate relationship to the pharmaceutical industry. We do like our drugs -- and our drug companies. Check out the numbers:

Percentage of Americans who use at least one prescription drug daily: 46.

Percentage of women who say they would “risk substantial side effects” for a pill that reverses effects of aging on skin: 22.

Percentage of men who say they would do the same for an effective anti-baldness pill: 45.

Percentage of men who would “give the tip of my pinkie” for the baldness cure: 19.

Average number of prescriptions per U.S. resident, annually, 2001: 11.

Total number of prescriptions in U.S., 2001: 3.1 billion.

Cost of the above: $132 billion.

Projected cost of prescriptions in U.S., 2014: $414 billion.

Profit rate for American pharmaceutical firms, 1998: 18.5%.

Median rate for all Fortune 500 companies: 4.5%

Percentage of incoming undergraduates seeking help in college health clinics who already use one or more prescription psychotropic drugs: 40.

Percentage increase in prescription of central nervous system drugs to children between 1985 and 1999: 327.

Percentage of consumers using anti-allergy medications Claritin, Allegra and Zyrtec who may not actually have allergies: 65.

Number of signs advertising the drug Claritin with the single word, “Anytime,” in Newark International Airport lobbies: 75.

Amount spent by Merck to advertise anti-arthritis drug Vioxx, 2001: $161 million.

Amount spent by Knoll Pharmeceutical to advertise anti-obesity drug Meridia: $65 million.

Amount spent by GlaxoSmithKline to promote antidepressant Paxil: $91.8 million.

Amount spent by Pfizer to promote Viagra in 2000: $89.5 million.

Amount spent by Campbell’s to promote soup: $58 million.

Amount spent by Nike to promote new line of running shoes: $78 million.

Total amount spent to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers, 2001: $2.7 billion.

Number of Americans, annually, who request and receive a prescription for a specific drug after seeing commercial for it: 8.5 million.

Number of Paxil prescriptions, 2001: 26 million.

Amount spent, 2001-02, to promote Paxil as a new anti-shyness drug: $60 million.

Estimated prescriptions of Paxil, 2002: 37 million.

Amount spent on lobbying by pharmaceutical firms, 1996-2002: $500 million.

Number of lobbyists for pharmaceutical industry: 600.

Number of former members of Congress now serving as lobbyists for pharmaceutical industry: 24.

Amount of direct contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, 2002 campaigns: $20 million.

Percentage of that given to Republicans: 75.

Amount given to chair, House Ways and Means Subcommittee: $200,000.

To chair, Senate Finance Committee: $114,100.

Number of new drugs approved by FDA, 1989-2000: 1,035.

Number of the above that the FDA says present “no significant clinical improvement” over older drugs: 558.

Number of times the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline was cited by FDA for “deceptive and misleading” advertising, 1997-2001: 14.

Number of times it was fined for same: 0.

Total number of notices of “advertising violations” issued by FDA to drug makers for print and TV advertisements that were misleading, 1997-2001: 88.

Amount of fines levied for such violations: $0.

Percentage of drug industry’s clinical trials done by universities in the early 1990s: 75.

Percentage of drug industry’s clinical trials done by universities, 2000: 34.

Percentage done by private research firms, 2000: 66.

Amount required to develop new drug, according to pharmaceutical industry: $500 million to $800 million.

Amount required to develop a new drug, according to independent economists: $110 million to $240 million.

Amount invested annually in new drug development, 2001: $30 billion.

Amount saved annually by using medication instead of hospitals to treat mentally ill: $25 billion.

Annual cost of prescription drug errors: $100 billion.