Viagra and the threatened arrival of competition

Pfizer is feeling the financial pressure as patents run out. In November 2011 it lost exclusivity on its top-selling anti-cholesterol drug. With generic statins now on sale, the manufacturer is desperately cutting its costs, particularly its R&D budget, to maximize the profits from the drugs that remain within patent protection. This made Pfizer's case against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in August 2011 particularly important. Pfizer collected about $1 billion from the US market from the sale of viagra. If cheap generics were allowed to compete, it would have to drop its price and that would alarm investors. So a ragged cheer was heard when Judge Rebecca Smith accepted Pfizer's argument that its patent for the use of the drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction did not actually expire until 2019. For the record, the initial patent only protected Pfizer's use of the drug for treating high blood pressure.

So it's interesting the FDA should now approve a fourth erectile dysfunction drug. This is not you understand, a "new" drug. The basic chemistry is the same and it works in exactly the same way as viagra. The only advantage claimed for the use of this new version of an old product is that it may work up to fifteen minutes more quickly than the other three drugs. In other words, there's no particular advantage for anyone to switch to the new drug. Yet here it comes, full of vim and vigor, and hoping to take some of the full-price business away from the existing three drugs.

This leaves the US market in a very interesting position. There are no cheap generics available in the brick-and-mortar drugstores. You have to go to an online pharmacy to make the savings. This shows us the best and worst of the patent system. It's perfectly reasonable that a manufacturer should have a period of protection during which development costs can be recovered. This encourages more people to develop new products. But when this forces consumers to pay unusually high prices for extended periods of time, the result is less pleasing.

How Well Do You Know Your Heart?

Many years ago, I read an interesting novel by Rose Tremain called Restoration. Set in the mid seventeenth century England, the book's lead character Robert Merival, along with a fellow medical student, happen upon a man with an open wound on his chest that allows his beating heart to be seen, and touched by the human hand. When they reach in and touch the man's heart, the two marvel that when touched, the heart has no feeling. This organ, to which we ascribe all things relating to the most powerful of human emotions, itself has no feeling. The human heart has no feeling! Something about this "heart fact" continues to intrigue me, so I decided to look at some of the things we do, or don't know, about the complicated and much discussed human heart.

If asked to put their hand on their heart, most people would place it on the left side of their chest, but in actuality, it sits closer to the centre. The left lung is slightly smaller than the right, to accommodate the heart. The heart weighs less than one pound, with the average woman's heart weighing only 8 ounces and a man's only 10. A woman's heart beats faster than a man's. Some scientists believe that the longer the ring finger is in boys, the less chance they have of having a heart attack.

Here are more nitty gritty details about your heart. The heart is almost entirely muscle, the myocardium, and is strong enough to lift approximately 3000 pounds, close to the weight of a compact car. Your heart beats about 35 million times a year.....100,000 beats per day, 70 beats per minute, with enough strength to shoot blood a distance of 30 feet! By the time we turn 70, the heart will have beat 2.5 billion times!

The heart is the first organ to show at nineteen days and scientists believe that by eight weeks, when the embryo is only an inch long, the heart is fully developed. The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain is even formed. Scientists still don't know what makes it start beating, but know it is generated from within the heart itself and doesn't need a connection to the brain to keep beating. (1)

Working As a Night Nurse

If you have ever considered a career in nursing, you may have already looked into the many different fields that nursing encompasses. For instance, you could work in dermatology, hospice, pediatrics, nurse-midwifery, wound care, rehabilitation, plastic surgery, or radiology, among several other choices. Many of these fields require night shift work, and as undesirable as that may sound, you might want to take a second look at it. In nursing, as well as several other career fields, working nights can be extremely lucrative and may even help to push your career forward, if you are looking for a raise or a promotion.

Working the graveyard shift sounds about as exciting and attractive as working in a graveyard (unless you are actually into that kind of thing), but being a night shift worker can be very good for your bank account. Companies always pay their night shifts a great deal more - anywhere from 10 to 20 percent more than the average salaries for their positions! You may have some exhausting nights, especially working as a night nurse in any field, but the satisfaction of knowing that you are getting paid well for your time will be enough to get you through to the next shift.

Night shift nurses are also at an advantage when it comes to raises and promotions. You are not competing with the day workers, of which there are many more than the night shift, so you have more opportunities to climb the promotion ladder. It is also a disadvantage if you are not particularly good at your job, because your lack of skills will be that much more obvious in a smaller pool of nurses. If you are a hard worker, your good work will stand out, and vice versa. Nonetheless, you should be glad to have better chances for advancement in your field by working nights.