OxyKidone

The maker of OxyContin is trying to get FDA approval to label their painkiller for use by children as young as six.  Because children get really bad play pains, right?

Purdue Pharma has paid dozens of clinical testing sites to document what happens when children get OxyContin.  Hmm, I think it would look something similar to this.  What possible reason could they come up with to do that?  The company says its motivation is to help doctors who currently prescribe the drug off-label to children, "a common practice in the treatment of pediatric conditions that involve moderate or severe pain", but I don't see how selling your brand of opiate... makes a difference to doctors.  Oh, that's right, it helps your company's bottom line.

A trio of physicians working with Purdue on the trials said the company appears to be doing the research to get a six-month extension on their patent for the original formulation of OxyContin, which expires next year.  Ah, another noble reason!  The pharmaceutical earned them close to $2.8 billion in sales revenue last year, and exclusivity in the drug world  is huge.

Most critics are citing addiction woes and their fear of abuse by younger recipients, but that is really irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.  Kids can't hock enough baseball cards to get the coin to buy the script, so that's out as a way to sustain abuse.  And pharmacies don't give prescriptions to minors, so that alleviates that.  Prescription drugs legally dispensed to and for adults have the same potential for abuse regardless of what they are - and that's on the recipient to keep those safely out of children's access.  Plus they're already giving off-label versions to kids...where's the current data on that "abuse"?

I'm bothered by this because it's a clear instance of a drug company trying to squeeze more profit out of a product in unscrupulous ways.  You've got to have a little more morality when you're making that much money on meds.