Medical Digest
FDA tells Viagra to pull "Wild Thing" TV ads

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The Food and Drug Administration, in a letter released yesterday, said the ads also failed to mention major side effects and why some patients should not take the impotence drug.

"Remember that guy who used to be called 'Wild Thing?' " the ads say. "The guy who wanted to spend the entire honeymoon indoors?" Later, blue horns sprout from the frisky man's head with "He's back" written on his forehead. The horns morph into the letter "V."

The FDA said Pfizer implied that the man in the ads had returned to a previous level of sexual desire and activity. "FDA is not aware of substantial evidence or substantial clinical experience demonstrating this benefit for patients who take Viagra," it said. "If you have data substantiating this claim, please submit them to FDA for review."

Birth rate for girls 10-14 lowest since '46

ATLANTA — The birth rate among American girls ages 10 to 14 has fallen to its lowest level since 1946, the government reported yesterday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the number of births among girls in this age group dropped by 38 percent from 1994 to 2002, even though the number of girls 10 to 14 rose 16 percent during the same period.

The birth rate among girls this young has been declining since 1994, when 12,901 babies were born to mothers ages 10 to 14. In 2002, the most recent year with complete data, there were 7,315 babies born to this age group, a rate of 0.7 births per 1,000 girls.

CDC researchers attributed the decline to sex education. "The message is getting across to them. Teens are behaving more responsibly when it comes to sex," said Fay Menacker, at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

Viagra, painkiller to get tracking tags

WASHINGTON — The makers of the impotence drug Viagra and the painkiller OxyContin said yesterday they will add radio transmitters to bottles of their pills to fight counterfeiting.
 
The technology will allow the medicines to be tracked electronically from production plant to pharmacy, a development the Food and Drug Administration said is an important tool to combat the small but growing problem of drug counterfeiting.

The devices will be part of the large bottles that manufacturers ship to stores and wholesalers, not the containers that consumers take home from their pharmacies. Most counterfeiting occurs in the wholesale distribution of medicines, FDA officials said.