Pubdate: Sun, 18 Mar 2001
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2001 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  901 Mission St., San Francisco CA 94103
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Author: Margot Magowan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption)

PRETTY IN PROZAC AGING ANTI-DEPRESSANT GETS A MAKEOVER

THE PILLS are so pretty, so pink and lavender. Prozac, the controversial 
bad-boy drug of the '90, had a makeover and a comeback. Now it has a 
kinder, gentler look and a new name: Serafem.

In case you couldn't tell by the color scheme, Serafem is marketed just for 
women -- specifically, women in their late 20s and early 30s -- to combat a 
condition known as Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD. Symptoms are 
said to include depression, anxiety, anger and sensitivity to rejection. 
PMDD is called a more severe form of the collective symptoms known as 
premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

Though the federal Food and Drug Administration last July approved 
marketing Prozac as Serafem, psychiatrists disagree with the PMDD diagnosis 
and list the disorder as "needing further study."

I, for one, couldn't be happier that Eli Lilly -- the company that created 
both Prozac and Serafem -- has found a cure for sensitivity to rejection. I 
always found it a useless emotion. Come to think of it, Al Gore may have 
been suffering from PMDD last December. It seemed so hard for him to admit 
he lost the presidential election.

Lest you worry that a lot of head shrinkers (amateurs included) will slow 
Eli Lilly's launch of Serafem, rest assured that the drug's debut is 
accompanied by a multi-million dollar media blitz. You can't miss it if you 
watch any TV.

One ad shows a woman struggling to untangle shopping carts at a supermarket.

Though she is visibly irritated, a voiceover consoles viewers that 
Serafem's pastel pills will restore her to the woman she really is.

The real woman -- the one inside of this irritated shell of a woman -- 
obviously does not get annoyed at the supermarket, an environment the 
female of the species ought to be able to navigate as easily as her own 
closet. A Stepford -- sorry, Serafem -- woman would never suggest to her 
partner in that irritated, you-know-she-hasn't-taken-her-medication-way, 
that he put down the remote control and do the shopping himself, while she 
relaxes in a bubble bath.

Why is Prozac making the shift from anti-depressant for the masses to a 
targeted girlie pill? It's because Prozac was about to go the way of grunge 
music, coffee bars and other has-beens of the '90s.

Prozac was going out of style.

When the drug came out 12 years ago, people popped it like Tic-Tacs. 
Best-selling books, such as Larry Kramer's "Listening to Prozac" and 
Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation," were essentially positive about the 
drug -- with Eli Lilly's trademarked brand name in their titles.

There was a national dialogue about Prozac. Was it right to take a pill to 
cure depression? Were we medicating human nature? How depressed did you 
have to be to take it? Had you taken it? Were you taking it now?

Alas, times have changed. Today Prozac is a victim of its own success, 
having spawned a whole family of two-syllable knock-offs -- Buspar, Paxil, 
Zoloft.

Not only is Eli Lilly losing out to the competition, but more urgently, 
this summer Prozac's patent rights run out. The only way the company can 
prevent generic drug makers from flooding the market with cheaper, copycat 
versions, is to convince the FDA it has found a new use for Prozac.

Prozac sales were projected to fall from $2.51 billion in 2000 to $625 
million in 2003.

So what's an aging, once-glamorous drug to do?

Find a new identity, a new image, a new wardrobe. Then get FDA approval and 
launch a publicity campaign. Enter Serafem, a drug with no past and no 
controversy.

Put it in spring colors! Give it a new name! Advertise to women!

Luckily for Prozac's new look, the FDA relaxed the regulations that kept 
prescription drug ads off TV. Now drug companies are allowed to take their 
glossy campaigns directly to the people. This way, patients go to the 
doctor's office humming jingles, listing their symptoms and asking for the 
desired drug by name. The doctor, once in the role of diagnostician, has 
evolved into the drug dispenser, the middleman between the drug company and 
you.

There are those who argue that identifying and diagnosing premenstrual 
conditions such as PMDD and PMS is pathologizing normal cycles and women's 
bodies in general. In support of this theory, statistics show neither 
condition exists in developing countries, implying PMDD is a culturally 
bound syndrome.

If this is correct, we would have to determine what conditions need to be 
changed to make the developed world a healthier place for women. Traits 
such as sensitivity to rejection would not be chalked up to hormone 
fluctuations, but as symptomatic of a culture where women are taught to be 
passive, don't learn to take risks and don't learn that failure is frequent 
and survivable.

Lest you forget, this is the same FDA that took 12 years to legalize 
RU-486, the abortion pill, but seems to have little trouble approving a 
pill that promises to keep women smiling at the supermarket.

Margot Magowan, co-founder of Women Count and the Woodhull Institute, also 
produces the Bernie Ward Program for KGO radio in San Francisco.
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MAP posted-by: Terry F