People love new, shiny things. If marketers claim something is new and improved - it has to better than the old stuff - right?
Detroit used this scheme for many years. Every year they introduced new models that were claimed to be bigger, better and faster than last year's models. In the 60's lower, wider and longer was the phrase that attracted people. Who would want last year's car when this year's car was so much better? You would have to be stupid or just plain gullible to buy something “old”. Based on the state of the U.S. auto industry right now, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
Pharmaceutical companies and their marketing divisions are now employing this same tactic. New drugs with flashy marketing campaigns are everywhere - you see them on TV, on the internet - ads extolling the virtues of the latest drug have become as ubiquitous as ads for cars - do I sense a trend here?
So are these new drugs with their omnipresent marketing campaigns any better than the “old” drugs they are meant to replace?
The short answer is “not always.”
In a recent opinion piece on the The New York Times website, Dr. Richard Friedman retells the case of a woman with bipolar disorder who was on an “exotic cocktail of drugs” including a “sedative, a new mood stabilizer and the latest antipsychotic medication.” When he polled his residents as to what was wrong with her treatment - he was met with silence - until one resident spoke up and mentioned the patient was never offered lithium - the single most effective treatment for bipolar disorder.
In this example, are the residents really to blame for not realizing their mistake? They have been brought up and educated by a society that extols the virtues of newer is ALWAYS better. In this case, lithium is an old drug with no potential for blockbuster status. Why waste marketing money on something old?
Bigger, better, faster is not always the rule in the pharma industry.
Gasket Standardization: A New Tool for Cost Reduction in API Pharmaceutical... 
(1)
