Pharma Giles writes

Pfizer drop Zoloft for OCD indication...

In an unusual move, Pfizer today announced that it would be withdrawing Zoloft as a front-line treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. "We appreciate that having a substantial body of clinical evidence that a drug doesn't work for a particular application isn't usually a reason for withdrawing it from that market segment,"

Pfizer spokesman Jim Spong said earlier today, "but in this instance, it's so blatantly obvious that Zoloft offers no clinical benefit to OCD sufferers, that even we had to take notice." Spong was referring to recent trials data derived from a clinical study of its own boardroom executives. The Zoloft patent expiry has seen sales slump from over $2 billion dollars to less than $800 million within a year, and the OCD market was seen as a potentially lucrative niche opportunity to offset loss of Pfizer's Zoloft sales to generics. "We've noted a lot of obsessive and illogical behaviour from some of our executives in the past few years," Spong said, "and so we thought we'd surreptitiously administer Zoloft to them to see if their behaviour improved."

"For example, our recent CEOs have clung to an obsessive belief that massive takeovers and mergers increase profits and boost earnings, despite a complete absence of industry evidence of anything of the kind. So we've been secretly administering Zoloft to the new guy for the past 18 months and yet only a week or so ago, he said that he had not ruled out yet another massive merger. It's clear that the treatment has been ineffective."

"Even worse, our Head of R&D has just announced a further wave of R&D redundancies, in the bizarre and thoroughly discredited belief that downsizing R&D staff improves R&D productivity and morale. Repeating an action with a 100% track record of failure and yet still expecting success really is a condition beyond the ability of Zoloft to ameliorate."

"It's clear that Zoloft really is just no good at treating this sort of mental disorder," admitted Spong. "Oh well, I guess it's back to pushing Lipitor For Everything..."