What If Merck Took Propecia Off the Market?

doctor rassman what are your thoughts on merck pulling propecias website down? there are articles all over the web.

is there a chance that propecia will be off the market? that sucks. so many of us use it with good results and no side affects

I’ve been sent links to articles about the Propecia site being pulled down, but the few I’ve seen were actually just cleverly disguised advertisements for a class action lawyer. We posted about that site being down a couple weeks ago.

Now I don’t know Merck’s intention (as I am not part of their inner circle), but I would be really surprised if Propecia is pulled from the market. I know there are some people beating a drum about it, but consider this — the 5mg dose of finasteride (Proscar) will always be available as a prostate treatment, so even if Propecia (1mg dose) went off the market, one could switch to 1/4 of a Proscar pill daily. Proscar has many generics in the marketplace and it is used in benign prostatic hypertrophy.

When Propecia goes off its patent protection, many manufacturers will produce the drug at the 1mg level. I realize there are already generic 1mg producers for some markets, but those pills aren’t legally sold in the US yet. When that patent expires late next year, I can’t say that Merck will continue to produce Propecia as the prices come down due to competition from the generics. But either way, finasteride will still be available.