Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Blatant Plagiarism

In my continuing attempts to bring you awesome writing that deserves wide recognition, I'd like to present this comedy piece. It was recently written by my esteemed colleague Phathead. I take no credit for it at all, except to say I laughed quite hard.



Introducing Lipitor-HD




It seems as if you can get almost anything in 'HD' today. Oh no, HD is not just for televisions anymore. There are HD Sunglasses, HD paint, and I even saw a sticker on a mirror claiming it was HD quality.

Naturally, it would make sense for Big Pharma to jump in on this. And why not? They prey on the lack of knowledge the public has on drugs, so might as well kick it up a notch.

I'm sure it would go something like this:


NEW YORK CITY, NY - Today Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler announced their newest product to be offered to consumers, Lipitor-HD."Everyone knows that Lipitor will soon be going off patent. As a company that's been unable to produce an innovative drug in years, it's imperative that we find some way to continue making money while doing as little work as possible", he said.

"One of the most popular terms signifying quality and wealth is the phrase 'High-Definition' or simply 'HD'. We decided that we needed to be the first company to produce a HD drug, and thus Lipitor-HD was born."

Kindler said Pfizer will explain to consumers that Lipitor-HD is Lipitor, but at a much higher resolution. This makes it more effective because a higher resolution automatically means it works better.

"Then we decided to market it in a 10,000 µg, 20,000 µg, 40,000 µg and 80,000 µg (instead of the previous 10mg, 20mg, 40mg, and 80mg) because bigger numbers mean that Lipitor-HD is more powerful than non-HD Lipitor."

It is expected that Pfizer will price Lipitor-HD at a 50% markup from the current price of Lipitor.

"The increase in price is representative of the fact that we'll continue to make sure the public believes our product to be vastly superior to any generic counterpart."

Lipitor-HD is expected to hit pharmacies nationwide in Q3 2011.

Note: Lipitor-HD is a fictional product.

16 comments:

Angela said...

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

Dragonfly said...

Only a 50% markup? How restrained..

bobbie said...

How 'bout Viagra or Cialis in HD?!?!?!?

The Mother said...

Not a whole lot different from the purple pill, eh?

Brilliant.

Anonymous said...

Hm...

Good idea, but the sarcastic writeup wasn't very funny. :(

Anonymous said...

Do I have to wear those stupid glasses to take it?

Grumpy, M.D. said...

No, those are for Lipitor-3D, coming in 2014.

Shalom said...

You being a neurologist have probably encountered Paxil-CR.

What they did here was take regular paroxetine, which is taken once daily, and coincidentally was *just* going off patent, and put it in a sustained release tablet that is taken . . . once daily. Some improvement there, right?

The joke among pharmacists (and drug reps) is that CR stands for Continued Revenue.

word verification "cureday". A new cure a day, how apt.

Grumpy, M.D. said...

Shalom- wait until once daily Aricept-XR comes out later this year.

No, I'm not joking.

Skeptic Turtle said...

My son, diagnosed with ADHD as a young boy, would explain to his friends that ADHD was Attention Deficit in High Definition.

Hildy said...

Sorry, but satire, to be effective, requires exaggeration and the press release was precisely what you would expect from big pharma--except of course for their honesty in admitting what they were doing. But honesty, while unexpected, isn't adequate to make the piece satiric.

FatMomma said...

Wow Hildy, maybe you need a STAT perscription for Fuckitol perhaps? It's amuzing because we all could see this happening. Wow.

Anonymous said...

They already came out with Asacol HD earlier this year too...I was like wtf? Oh pfizer! We will have lots of happy customers when the generic Lipitor comes out though!

Anonymous said...

How 'bout Sular? They probably put an extra layer of film coating on the tabs, gave it a fancy name - "geomatrix delivery system" or something equally impressive to those not in the know, changed the dosages by a couple of milligrams and there you have it...an extra gazillion dollars and some pretty fat paychecks for execs. They timed it PERFECTLY. Just before the generic launch, they took the old Sular off the mkt so pt's needed to get a new rx BEFORE the generic was avail. Once the generic was avail (Mylan makes it), it was more or less useless...everyone had an rx at the new dosages.

Lipitor HD will come out in 10,001 µg, 20,001 µg, 40,001 µg and 80,001 µg and whammo...no interchange.

I don't get it. How do these people SLEEP at night knowing that they are hosing people (some whom can least afford it) beyond belief? It makes me sad...

Phathead said...

Sorry to hear my writing doesn't match some of your approvals. I wasn't going for a gut-busting laugh anyways, namely to see if it would propagate as a real product... and who knows, maybe I'll get royalties from Pfizer for giving them ideas...

Chris said...

If you have an allergic reaction to Lipitor HD, I bet the projectile vomiting is GORGEOUS!

 
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