USA: "low-T" problem...deceptive marketing

Deceptive marketing "duped" insurers into paying billions for ineffective and unsafe drugs to treat low testosterone, one claims in Federal Court. 

Medical Mutual of Ohio sued Abbvie, Abbott Laboratories, Solvay America, Eli Lilly and Company, Auxilium Pharmaceutical, Actavis Pharma and various subsidiaries on Wednesdays. 

The complaint comes in the wake of hundreds of product-liability lawsuits against Abbott Labs, the maker of AndroGel, and others over an aggressive disease-awareness campaign that led millions of men to think that their lack of energy was low-testosterone, or "low-T," problem. 

Many men who took AndroGel claim that the drug gave them serious medical problems, including life-threatening cardiac events, strokes and thrombolytic problems. 

Medical Mutual of Ohio, an insurance company, joined the chorus of individual complaints Wednesday with a class action purporting to represent all insurers that paid for the costs of AndroGel, Testopel, Axiron, Androderm and Fortesta Gel. 

"These TRT [testosterone-replacement therapy] drugs were marketed as part of a decade-long deceptive marketing scheme to transform the male aging process into a curable disease state defendants variously called 'Andropause,' 'ate-onset male hypogonadism,' 'age-related hypogonadism,' or simply 'Low T, which were invented from whole cloth," the 341-page complaint states. 

But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration never approved promotion of the TRT drugs to third-party payors like insurance companies, as well as to patients and physicians, "for 'Andropause' and as a treatment for a host of medical problems,"Medical Mutual says. 

In addition to unapproved, such "off-label" were also ineffective, the complaint says.(Más)

Ver también:

The "Low T" Mouvement / "Selling That New-Man Feeling."