I’m not a diabetic, and I’ve always wondered what it must be like to have to shoot yourself up with insulin repeatedly, not to mention having to worry incessantly about what you eat and drink, blood sugar levels, and so on.
Well, soon no one will need wonder about it anymore:
A panel of doctors and statisticians voted 7-2 today to advise the Food and Drug Administration to clear Exubera, developed by Nektar Therapeutics, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis SA, for use in people with both juvenile and adult-onset diabetes. The agency usually follows the advice of its committees.Exubera is part of a wave of new treatments to help diabetics control their blood-sugar levels. The same committee tomorrow will consider Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Pargluva, the first of a new class of non-insulin therapies. Global sales of Exubera may reach $1.4 billion in 2009, Ian Sanderson, an S.G. Cowen analyst in Boston, said in an Aug. 31 note to clients.
“The idea of a treatment that bypasses (needles) with the same effectiveness can really save people a lot of hell,” said Rebecca W. Killion, a Bowie, Maryland, diabetes patient who served on the committee. She said she injects herself with insulin four times a day.
This is “greedy” unapologetic capitalism at its finest, and every diabetic should be thankful that “greedy” pharmaceutical companies saw a medical need and sought to meet it.
Let’s just hope that Pfizer, which like Merck faces a mountain of frivolous COX-2 inhibitor litigation, isn’t sued into oblivion first.