Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15026

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Kresge N.
Pfizer, Lilly, Bayer Operated Erection-Drug Cartel, Swiss Say
Bloomberg.com 2009 Feb 10
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aivV9BXUNiZs&refer=home

Full text:

Pfizer Inc., Eli Lilly & Co. and Bayer AG, rivals in the male impotence-drug market, fixed prices in Switzerland and should be punished, a panel of the Swiss Competition Commission said.

Pfizer, which makes Viagra; Lilly, the maker of Cialis; and Bayer, which sells Levitra, made “inadmissible vertical competition agreements” by maintaining a recommended public selling price for the drugs, the panel said today.

“The recommended public selling price covered the drugmakers, pharmacies and physicians,” Olivier Schaller, a spokesman for the commission, said in a telephone interview. “It was widely followed.”

The drugmakers have 20 days to respond before the commission decides whether to follow the panel’s recommendation to penalize the companies or prohibit them from suggesting prices for the pills, Schaller said. The investigation began in June 2006.

“We are confident that we respected Swiss law,” Petra Streit, a spokeswoman for Indiana-based Lilly, said by telephone. Streit declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation.

Helmut Schaefers, a spokesman for Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer, and Susanne Thost, a spokeswoman for New York-based Pfizer, declined to comment on the investigation, saying the companies hadn’t had time to analyze the Swiss panel’s claims.

An estimated 15 million to 30 million men have difficulty getting or keeping an erection, according to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Viagra’s U.S. approval in 1998 offered a convenient alternative to older injections for erectile dysfunction, and widespread marketing of all of the pills has eased much of the taboo about treating the disorder.

Viagra, Cialis and Levitra work by relaxing muscles in blood vessels, which increases blood flow to the penis and spurs an erection.