Biotech Values

[rfj1862]

I don't think I've missed P3's point. Patients in this study are unlikely to be switched for efficacy reasons. I'd be willing to bet that the *vast* majority were likely to have been switched because of a cost issue--even before it went generic, simva was significantly less expensive than Lipitor.

That is to say, they were doing just fine on Lipitor to begin with and were switched for reasons not related to efficacy.

You have to understand that no physician would take a patient who was doing poorly on atorvastatin and switch them to simvastatin in the hopes that they would respond better to simvastatin. But your scenario would require that a large number of physicians would do just that...

In any case, there is no way to design a randomized trial to test this. You have to rely on real-world data. This is the best you're going to get.