According to the book, The Truth about the Drug Companies, there are two different ways to go about this. Usually if a drug does not make much money when it is first released, it's because it is used to treat an illness that is affecting a limited group. One way the drug companies push normal to blockbuster status is to test it for other uses, then if the tests show it to be safe and effective to treat other uses, seek approval from the FDA to market it for the new uses. This will widen the base of people that can use the drug.



Testing the same drug for new uses is what Bristol-Meyers Squib did with their drug Taxol. Taxol was originally approved to treat ovarian cancer. Soon after Taxol was released, Bristol-Meyers Squib tested it for a list of other uses including breast and lung cancer. This greatly expanded their market and in turn increased their revenue drastically.

A different more shady approach would be to produce studies finding other uses for a drug on your own, then solicit the information directly to the doctors yourself in order to get them to prescribe the medication for unapproved uses. This is the approach the Parker-Davis company took when marketing its drug Nuerontin.

Nuerontin was approved for the narrow use of treating epilepsy. As you might guess, there was not a whole lot of money in that category. But the patent help on Nuerontin was set to run out in 2 years, not leaving them enough time to seek FDA approval for other uses. Instead of getting the drug approved for other uses through the FDA, Parker-Davis took a more illegal approach.

Parker-Davis hired a firm to produce study results for Nuerontin with doing little to no research and then prepared journal articles based on the sub-par research. Next, they paid well known doctors to endorse the articles and sign off as the authors. Most of the articles contained no new information, just embellished facts about Nuerontin supported by established doctors. After they had all the supporting evidence they needed, all they had left to do was make sure practicing doctors heard about the results.

No matter what regulations the government puts on the drug companies, they will always be looking to make money before looking to help the consumer. They inflate their prices in order to create more marketing ads to try to sell more drugs to make more money. The only way to break this cycle of ridiculously high drug prices is to purchase from a different market. Drugs found in Canada and Mexico are usually 40 to 50% cheaper than here in America. A good resource to locate cheap prescription medication is FreebeeForeignPharmacy.com. Freebee has a database of foreign pharmacies that allows you to locate your discount medication from foreign pharmacies as well as compare their prices. For more information on ordering from online <---****HYPERLINK****--->"http://www.freebeeforeignpharmacy.com">foreign pharmacies.