The House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters yesterday to Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, asking the drugmakers to stop all direct-to-consumer ads for their anemia treatments; halt incentives to doctors who prescribe these drugs; turn over reams of marketing material, and provide documents concerning interactions with the FDA.

John Dingell and Bart Stupak, who co-chair the committee and expressed “increasing alarm” about the safety of the drugs, gave them two weeks to reply and urged the companies to halt their ads until May 12, when an FDA advisory committee meets. The agency recently required Black Box warnings related to dosing, and the congressman are particularly concerned with off-label promotion.

A spokesman for Amgen, which sells Epogen and Aranesp, says the company will “fully cooperate,” but denies advertising the drugs to consumers or promoting off-label uses. He also maintains Amgen doesn’t give financial incentives to docs to increase scrip writing, but he couldn’t comment about this week’s JAMA study - about payments to docs - showing Amgen paid Minnesota physicians more than $4 million in 2003.

At J&J, which sells Procrit, a spokeswoman wrote that the company will also cooperate; DTC, which don’t promote off-label use, last ran on TV in 2005, and offers discounts that comply with federal regulations. But there was no indication J&J would halt any other DTC advertising for Procrit, which is puzzling. The drugmakers aren’t required to pull any ads, but given the anger some members of Congress are directing toward the industry, complying would be wise.

[tags]Amgen, Aranesp, Bart Stupak, Epogen, John Dingell, Johnson & Johnson, Procrit[/tags]