Word: diazepam
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...accidental discovery in the 1950s of the first synthetic tranquilizer, chlorpromazine (Thorazine), ushered in a gentler age of psychopharmacology. As other feel-good pills followed--Tofranil (imipramine) for depression, Miltown and Equanil (meprobamate) for psychosis, Valium (diazepam) for severe anxiety and lithium for manias--no mental illness seemed beyond their reach. Governments began emptying mental wards on the assumption that madness could be medicated--ignoring the fact that thousands of former inmates ended up living, and suffering, in the streets...
...epileptics, acute repetitive seizure episodes can be extremely dangerous or even fatal--and, until now, they often required a trip to the emergency room, causing hazardous delays in treatment. Now Diastat, a gel formation of the epilepsy medication diazepam, makes it possible for a family member to stop seizure episodes before they become harmful...
...selling prescription drug. Until its patent expired last February, Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss firm, , enjoyed a monopoly in manufacturing Valium. Last week that profitable preserve was spoiled when three pharmaceutical companies received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin marketing the medicine under its generic name, diazepam...
About a dozen manufacturers applied to produce the tranquilizer, but permission has so far been granted only to Zenith Laboratories, Mylan Laboratories and the Parke-Davis division of Warner-Lambert. Diazepam is expected to sell for up to 50% less than Valium. One hundred 5-mg tablets of the tranquilizer now cost around $25. Hoffmann-La Roche could lose 50% of its market share within three years. Says Zenith President James Leonard: "Consumers won't pay for a trademark. They are more interested in therapeutic value...
Last spring the commission recommended that Roche be forced to cut prices even further, partly because the Company was still charging many times more for the drugs than they cost to manufacture. (In Italy, for example, one kilo of diazepam, the generic name for Valium, costs only $28.) More perplexing to Roche executives, the commission concluded that the firm was spending too much money for research (about 15% of revenues, v. 7% to 12% for other firms). Hoffmann-La Roche executives were so incensed by the British order that they called the first press conference in the company...