The Neurontin Legacy — Marketing through Misinformation and Manipulation

Abstract

Old drugs usually fade away. Sometimes, however, they leave surprising legacies. In 1997, for example, a study comparing the effects of brand-name and generic formulations of levothyroxine led to an uproar over the discovery that the manufacturer of the brand-name product suppressed publication of the result that the two formulations were equivalent. Recently, lawsuits alleging damages from illegal marketing of another old drug, gabapentin (Neurontin), have yielded remarkable discoveries about the structure and function of pharmaceutical marketing.Patented in 1977 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1993 in doses of up to 1800 mg per day . . .