The Pharmaceutical "Business with Disease"

Up to date news and comment about the "Business with Disease".

December 30, 2007

Drug firms probed over Iraq cash
GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca have been asked to hand over papers as part of a probe into bribes allegedly paid to Saddam Hussein's former Iraq regime. The Serious Fraud Office is examining allegations of bribes paid to secure lucrative contracts in breach of Iraq's 1996 to 2003 oil-for-food programme.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

December 27, 2007

Disgraced Former FDA Official Marketing Lilly Drug
As a 33-year-old Wall Street insider known for recommending hot medical stocks, many were surprised when physician Scott Gottlieb was named FDA deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs in 2005. "Gottlieb has an orientation which belies the goal of the FDA," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. "The appointment comes out of nowhere," said former FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy. "Anything but a reassuring signal," said Time magazine. As critics feared, soon after assuming the number two FDA position, Gottlieb had to recuse himself from resource planning for a possible bird flu epidemic because of financial ties to Roche and Sanofi-Aventis. He also had to bow out of work related to Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble and five other drug companies. When three people in a multiple sclerosis drug trial lost blood platelets and one died, he called stopping the study "an overreaction" because the disease not the drug might be to blame.
Read article at scoop.co.nz (New Zealand)
Comment: Now that he's left the FDA, Gottlieb is helping sell Lilly's osteoporosis drug Evista which the company was convicted in 2005 of marketing, off label, for anti cancer and heart disease purposes. In other words, this is the famed "revolving door", between U.S. government agencies and their friends in the "business with disease", at its very worst.

December 27, 2007

Drug reactions 'kill thousands'
Almost 3,000 people have died in the past three years after suffering serious side-effects or allergies to their medicines, say official figures. More than 13,000 others in the same period had an "adverse drug reaction", but survived with hospital treatment. The statistics, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, include damage caused by "over the counter" drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: Shocking though they are, these statistics are almost certainly an underestimate, as medical experts warn that as few as one in 10 deaths and other serious complications are being reported.

December 25, 2007

Nigerian Judge Detains Pfizer Officials
KANO, Nigeria (AP) - A judge in Nigeria has ordered the arrest of three top officials of the U.S.-based drug company Pfizer Inc., saying they failed to honor an order to appear in court over a $2 billion suit the company is facing for a 1996 drug trial, court papers showed. Judge Shehu Atiku, sitting in the northern city of Kano on Monday, said his ruling Nov. 6 that the officials of the Pfizer subsidiary in Nigeria should appear in court were not heeded at that resumed sitting. The officials to be arrested include the head of Pfizer in Nigeria, Ngozi Edozien and senior officials Lare Baale and Segun Donguro, the court papers said.
Read Associated Press news story at google.com

December 22, 2007

FDA issues new safety warning for fentanyl patch
Potent painkiller implicated in hundreds of deaths
The government issued a new safety warning Friday for a skin patch containing a potent painkiller that has been implicated in hundreds of deaths, saying the patch poses risks that doctors and patients often fail to understand.
Read article in the San Francisco Chronicle (USA)
Comment: A medical journal study published this summer identified fentanyl, a narcotic as much as 100 times more powerful than morphine, as the suspect drug in more than 3,500 accidental deaths reported to the FDA from 1998 to 2005.

December 20, 2007

Pfizer Is Sued Over Lipitor Marketing
A former Pfizer Inc. official in a lawsuit accused the company of illegally boosting sales of its top-selling drug Lipitor through an elaborate campaign of misleading educational programs for doctors. Jesse Polansky, claims that the educational campaign was a key part of a marketing strategy that "led thousands of physicians to prescribe Lipitor for millions of patients who did not need medication" and could be harmed by overly aggressive treatment. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in February 2004. It was immediately sealed to allow federal prosecutors time to decide if they wanted to intervene in the case. In August, the government said it wouldn't intervene, lifting the seal. Pfizer was served a copy of the suit yesterday, according to Dr. Polansky's lawyer, Steve Berman of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro.
Read article in the Wall Street Journal (USA)

December 16, 2007

A risky drug may get wider market
The FDA may approve Zyprexa for kids, despite its significant side effects in adult use.
It sounds like a cosmic, FDA joke: The Food and Drug Administration approves the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa to treat adults with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. It becomes a market wonder, a bestseller. But the side effects turn out to be dangerous; some patients develop diabetes. Some 30,000 people sue the manufacturer, Eli Lilly. The pharmaceutical giant shells out more than $1-billion to settle the cases. Here comes the punch line: Though studies show that kids are even more susceptible to Zyprexa's dangerous side effects, now Lilly wants the government's seal of approval for adolescents to use it. And the FDA is about to say yes.
Read article in the St. Petersburg Times (USA)

December 13, 2007

China Shuts Down Leukemia Drug Maker
China's food and drug safety agency has revoked the license of a company responsible for making tainted leukemia drugs blamed for causing leg pains and partial paralysis among dozens of patients. State-owned Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Co., a unit of China's biggest drug maker Shanghai Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., will also be fined the highest amount allowed under law and profits from the sale of the contaminated drugs will be confiscated, the State Food and Drug Administration said in a statement on its Web site seen Thursday. Some Shanghai Hualian executives were detained by police on suspicion they deliberately withheld information about violations of production standards during the investigation, the SFDA's statement said.
Read Associated Press news story at google.com

December 11, 2007

Avandia heart risks seen at the population level
The findings of clinical trials have linked the use of thiazolidinediones, a class of diabetes drugs, with congestive heart failure and possibly heart attacks. Now, new research indicates that these associations, at least with Avandia, also apply to individuals in the community, and not just clinical trials
Read article at reuters.com

December 7, 2007

European Commission Accused Of Pushing DTC
Several associations have accused the European Commission of supporting pharma companies in trying to make direct-to-consumer advertising for medicinal products legal. Four groups representing complementary health insurers, independent medical bulletins and patient advocates have issued a joint press release claiming: “The European Commission is supportive of the industry’s moves: its ‘consultations’ are little more than an attempt to sway public opinion.”
Read article at pharmalot.com

December 6, 2007

Family blames Champix for man's suicide
The family of a man who killed himself while taking a ''wonder pill" to help him give up smoking have blamed his death on side effects of the drug. Omer Jama hoped the Champix tablets were the cure that would end his 15-year addiction to smoking - but his family are certain that they led him to take his own life. Last week American drug safety experts issued a warning about the pill and suicide.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

Advisory Panel Rejects New Use for Cancer Drug
A federal advisory committee voted yesterday that Genentech's drug Avastin should not be approved as a treatment for breast cancer. By a 5-4 vote, the committee decided that Avastin's ability to delay the worsening of cancer did not outweigh the drug's toxic side effects, especially since women getting Avastin did not live significantly longer in the end.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

Bristol-Myers to Eliminate 4,800 Jobs
Bristol-Myers Squibb said yesterday that it would cut approximately 10 percent of its work force of 43,000 employees, continuing a year of pharmaceutical industry layoffs as drug makers adapt to a more competitive environment. Besides layoffs, the company said it would sell or close half its 27 manufacturing plants worldwide, farm out some manufacturing and winnow its portfolio of more than 500 products by about 60 percent.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

December 5, 2007

Nigeria quits talks with Pfizer over deadly drug trials: official
KANO (AFP) - Nigeria's Kano state has quit out-of-court talks with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer over allegedly illegal drug trials that led to the deaths of 11 children in 2006, a senior justice official said Wednesday. "Kano state government is no longer inclined towards holding any direct discussions with Pfizer, its retained counsel or employees," said a letter from justice commissioner Aliyu Umar addressed to Pfizer lawyer Anthony Idigbe. Nigeria alleges that Pfizer used an untested meningitis drug, Trovan, without authorisation on 200 children during a triple epidemic of meningitis, measles and cholera in which over 12,000 people died. It says that the drug testing led to 11 deaths and more than 180 cases of deformity.
Read article at Yahoo News

December 3, 2007

Hundreds get sick from Gardasil cancer vaccine
MORE than 17 girls a week have been experiencing adverse reactions such as seizures and numbness after taking cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil since it became widely distributed in April. But the Department of Health and Ageing, while revealing the number of reactions, is refusing to release the details of them - despite growing controversy overseas, including links to at least seven deaths. There have been previous reports in Australia of young girls fainting, experiencing seizures, dizzy spells and paralysis, including 20 students at a Melbourne private school who reported being sick after having an injection in late May. The Daily Telegraph can reveal that as of November 30 there have been 496 adverse reaction reports filed to the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA).
Read article from the Daily Telegraph at news.com.au (Australia)

Diabetes drug link to weak bones
A commonly-prescribed drug for type 2 diabetics may increase the risk of brittle bone disease, say researchers. Tests on mice found that rosiglitazone (Avandia), which is used to boost the effects of insulin, could be interfering with new bone formation.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: An earlier study had already suggested that Avandia could lead to bone fractures in men as well as women. Other research, meanwhile, suggests that Avandia can increase the risk of heart attack by more than 40 percent and that one in every 50 patients taking it over a period of 26 months will have to be hospitalised for heart failure. In the United States, it has been estimated that Avandia's toxic effects on the heart caused as many as 205,000 heart attacks, strokes and death from 1999 to 2006.

November 29, 2007

FDA panel wants extra warnings on Glaxo asthma drugs Advair, Serevent
GlaxoSmithKline's best-selling drug Advair, manufactured in part at a plant in Zebulon, may get new warnings on its label highlighting the drug's risk for children. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel said late Wednesday that the asthma treatment's label should contain more information about its potentially deadly side effects in children. The FDA panel also said the information should be placed on the label of Serevent, another GSK asthma drug with the same active ingredient as Advair.
Read article in the Triangle Business Journal (USA)
Comment: Serevent and Advair already carry warnings, added in 2006, that say the drugs could increase the risk of asthma-related deaths.

November 28, 2007

Nigeria: Pfizer Blocks Prosecution
Pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, yesterday blocked the Federal Government from prosecuting it on criminal charges by obtaining an injunction restraining police from arraigning its officials. The Federal Government is instituting criminal charges against Pfizer before an Abuja Federal High Court for allegedly making Nigerian children "guinea pigs" for testing its meningitis drug in Kano in 1996. The government said the injunction is preventing it from prosecuting the multi-national company.
Read article at allafrica.com

November 28, 2007

FDA probes reported behavior changes
WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration recently said it has received reports of mood disorders and erratic behavior among patients taking the Pfizer Inc. drug Chantix. The drug won regulatory approval last year to aid adults trying to quit smoking and sales totaled $101 million. FDA said it is still gathering information about the drug, but advised doctors to closely monitor patients taking Chantix for behavior changes. The agency said the changes have often been reported within days or weeks of people first taking the drug.
Read article at timesleader.com (USA)
Comment: Some reports have linked Chantix to suicidal and violent behaviour. In the UK, meanwhile, the BBC is reporting that the UK's medicines watchdog, the MHRA, is to monitor the situation "closely" after 839 reports of adverse reactions to Champix. These reports include 50 cases of depression and 16 of suicidal thoughts.

November 27, 2007

Novartis' Myfortic poses fetal risks–FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that Novartis AG's organ rejection drug, Myfortic, increases risk of first-trimester miscarriage and birth defects. Novartis said in a letter to health-care providers that the drug will carry a new safety warning outlining the increased miscarriage risk and raised risk for malformations of the external ear and the face, such as cleft lip and palate. Other drug-related birth defect risks include anomalies of distal limbs, which include fingers and toes, and of the heart, esophagus and kidney.
Read article at reuters.com

November 26, 2007

Chinese drug association official stands trial for alleged bribe taking
A Chinese drug association official will stand trial in Beijing for allegedly taking bribes totaling 100,000 yuan (13,333 U.S. dollars), the Beijing Times reported on Monday. Last week, the public procurators office filed a document with the Xicheng District Court against Liu Yongjiu. It charged the former deputy secretary general of the China Pharmaceutical Association, a non-profit organization for pharmacists, had taken bribes from an advertising company and a pharmaceutical manufacturer, according to the newspaper.
Read article in the People's Daily (China)

November 26, 2007

Alzheimer drugs don't delay dementia onset-study
LONDON - Giving Alzheimer's drugs to people with early memory problems does not seem to delay the onset of the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.
Read article at reuters.com
Comment: Italian researchers found that in none of six clinical trials they examined did using Alzheimer's drugs significantly reduce the rate of progression from mild cognitive impairment to dementia.

November 25, 2007

Dr. Drug Rep
Click here to read Daniel Carlat's revealing story, published in the New York Times magazine, about the year he earned $30,000 in supplemental income by giving "educational talks" to doctors on behalf of drug companies.

November 24, 2007

Additional warnings urged for 2 flu drugs
FDA finds Tamiflu, Relenza linked to bizarre behavior, deaths
WASHINGTON – Food and Drug Administration experts are recommending new label warnings about possible dangerous psychiatric side effects of influenza drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, according to FDA documents. The documents, posted Friday on the FDA Web site, were prepared for a meeting Tuesday of the FDA's Pediatric Advisory Committee. Studies revealed 596 cases in which patients who took Tamiflu experienced "neuropsychiatric events" such as delirium, delusions or hallucinations. The episodes sometimes led to impulsive behavior and self-injury. Tamiflu is made by Roche Holdings.
Read article in the Houston Chronicle (USA)

November 24, 2007

Drug group's campaign slammed by activists
Newspaper ads are half-truths, say critics
Health and consumer rights protection activists yesterday slammed the pharmaceutical industry for running adverts which mislead the public about the high cost of drugs. The statement is a reaction to full-page ads in several local newspapers. The reaction came one day after the industry, represented by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PRreMA), ran the ads that blame the high cost of drugs on improper regulations. The ads, "Stop Taxing Medicine", appeared in several newspapers. The activists said the ads contained half-truths about high drug costs. "They are trying to give a false impression that the high prices of pharmaceutical products are the result of inappropriate regulations," said Jakkrit Kuanpot, an academic at Wollongong University in Australia. "This information distorts the fact - how much they pay for such marketing strategy compared to research and development? "And they did not even mention the high profits they get from selling expensive drugs."
Read article in the Bangkok Post (Thailand)

November 21, 2007

Osteoarthritis painkiller is removed from sale
A painkiller taken by thousands of people for osteo-arthritis has been removed from sale because it may be linked to liver damage. The use of Prexige (lumiracoxib), which has been taken by 5,000 people in the last year, has been suspended by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. New data has found an increase in the number of cases of serious liver reactions which have occurred with the 100mg dose. In some cases the reactions have been in people taking the drug for less than one month.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

November 19, 2007

GlaxoSmithKline Spent $3.6M Lobbying
WASHINGTON – British pharmaceutical maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC spent more than $3.6 million in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a recent disclosure form. The company lobbied Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services on issues related to patent reform legislation, pharmaceutical regulation and foreign investment in the U.S.
Read article in the Boston Globe (USA)

November 13, 2007

Acne cure may raise suicide risk, says study
An acne drug prescribed to thousands of people could cause severe depression and even lead to suicidal thoughts, according to new research. Roaccutane, used to treat those suffering from severe acne, appears to interfere with the brain's use of serotonin – the feel-good hormone – a study published today found. In the United Kingdom 26 patients taking the drug have committed suicide. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency [MHRA] also recorded 19 attempted suicides, and 31 patients considering suicide, among those taking Roaccutane.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

November 11, 2007

Drugs for ADHD 'not the answer'
Treating children who have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder with drugs is not effective in the long-term, research has shown. A study obtained by the BBC's Panorama programme says drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta work no better than therapy after three years of treatment. The findings by an influential US study also suggested long-term use of the drugs could stunt children's growth. It said that the benefits of drugs had previously been exaggerated.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

November 10, 2007

Britons excluded from US drug compensation
· Painkiller was withdrawn after fatal side-effects
· No payments to patients outside America, says firm
Merck, the US pharmaceutical giant, is to continue battling with hundreds of British claimants over its failed arthritis painkiller, Vioxx, in spite of agreeing yesterday to a settlement with US residents. Merck agreed a $4.85bn (£2.42 bn) settlement, one of the biggest in history, with US claimants who blamed the drug for heart attacks and other side-effects. But the company said this would not apply to British lawsuits or others round the world suing for compensation.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

November 9, 2007

Vioxx settlement to total $4.85bn
The maker of Vioxx has agreed to pay $4.85bn to settle legal claims that the controversial drug caused many users to suffer strokes and heart failure. Merck & Co said it was setting up a fund to compensate victims, adding that claimants would only receive payment if certain key conditions were met. To qualify, individuals must prove they suffered serious illness, at the most two weeks after they bought the drug. The deal may end multiple lawsuits but Merck has not admitted any liability.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

November 8, 2007

Rise in use of anti-depressants
Prescriptions issued in Scotland for anti-depressants have risen more than four-fold in less than 15 years, an NHS report has revealed. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland said for every 1,000 people there were 85 daily doses of the drugs dispensed in 2006, compared with 19 doses in 1992.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: Discussing these rises, Shona Neil, chief executive of the Scottish Association for Mental Health, pointed out that: "There are a lot of people being prescribed anti-depressants inappropriately." She also dismissed claims that the new anti-depressants carried fewer side effects.

November 7, 2007

Spain says 'thalidomide was sold'
The Spanish authorities have told the BBC that the birth-defect drug, thalidomide, was sold between 1957 and 1961. The admission will be seen as a victory for thalidomide campaigners who want their condition to be recognised. Until now the health ministry has refused to confirm that the drug was sold, which has led to confusion. A one line email was sent to the BBC which simply says: "Thalidomide was sold in Spain between 1957 and 1961." The president of AVITE - the Spanish thalidomide association - Pepe Riquelme said "It's very, very important for us that they have finally admitted this. It's a big step. It confirms what we knew - that we have been fighting for the right thing for all these years. It opens up a new path for us. It's going to be a long struggle, but we will win in the end."
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: More than 10,000 children in 46 countries were estimated to have been born with deformities as a consequence of their mothers using thalidomide during pregnancy. Astonishingly, therefore, despite the fact that it is clearly a highly dangerous chemical, the drug is still prescribed in some countries, including the United States, for the treatment of multiple myeloma, a type of cancer.

November 5, 2007

Heart Surgery Drug Pulled From Market
Pressured by regulators, the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG announced Monday that it had agreed to withdraw the controversial heart surgery drug Trasylol after a Canadian study suggested that it increased death rates. Dr. John K. Jenkins, a leading official of the Food and Drug Administration, said, "F.D.A. could not identify a specific patient population where the benefits of using Trasylol could outweigh the risks."
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

November 5, 2007

AstraZeneca's Crestor Fails A Heart Failure Study
More bad news for the drugmaker. The latest development is from a study that found its Crestor cholesterol pill didn't reduce deaths in older people with heart failure, which means AstraZeneca will have a hard time generating new scrips for such patients.
Read article at pharmalot.com

November 5, 2007

Study sheds light on failed heart drug
The official wall of silence surrounding the failure of Pfizer's artery-scrubbing drug torceptrapib lifted Monday, when researchers released a major study, called Illuminate, showing the drug sharply increased the rate of heart disease deaths.
Read article in USA Today
Comment: The researchers reported that torceptrapib raised the rate of heart attacks and other deadly events by 25%. Deaths rose by 40%. The drug was also found to be toxic to the adrenal gland, producing biological changes known to increase blood pressure and damage artery walls.

November 5, 2007

Risk said associated with Eli Lilly drug
A new experimental drug from Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. has been found to have a risk of major bleeding, sometimes even death, a report says.
Read article at physorg.com

October 31, 2007

Drug firms try to bribe doctors with cars
· Developing world 'easy target' for multinationals
· Gifts and pampering now norm, says report
Multinational drug companies are targeting doctors in developing countries with dinners and lavish gifts, such as air conditioners, washing machines and down-payments on cars, as incentives to prescribe their drugs, a report reveals today. The report from Consumers International (CI) says that self-regulation by the multinational drug giants has failed, citing drug adverts by companies such as Glaxo-SmithKline, Wyeth, Novartis and Pfizer that would be considered misleading in Europe, as well as the heavy promotion by all companies of products to doctors. The impact on patients is serious, the report says. "Up to 50% of medicines in developing countries are inappropriately prescribed, dispensed or sold," it says.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

October 29, 2007

Sleeping pills for kids top global list of bad products
Sleeping pills advertised for children, dangerous toys and bottled water taken from local reservoirs are among the world's worst products, a global consumer group said Monday. In announcing its bad products awards for 2007, Consumers International said the top prize went to the US subsidiary of Japanese firm Takeda Pharmaceuticals for promoting a sleeping drug for children. The company ran a television advertisement in the United States which used images of children, chalk boards and a school bus to sell its drug Rozerem.
Read article at physorg.com

October 26, 2007

Schoolgirls to get 'cancer jab'
Schoolgirls in England will be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer from September 2008, ministers are set to announce. It will go further than recommended by experts, with all aged 12-13 eligible, and a catch-up campaign up to 18.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: One of the vaccines that have been developed, Gardasil, made by Merck, is already reported to have been responsible for 3,461 adverse reactions, including eleven deaths, in the United States alone. In Australia, meanwhile, reports suggest that dozens of teenage girls have been sickened by Gardasil. In one case being investigated, a girl was left temporarily paralysed and unable to talk.

October 25, 2007

World Experts Demand End to Child Drugging in the US
On October 12, 2007, experts in the field of psychiatry and child development from all over the world arrived in Washington to attend the annual conference of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology. This year's conference focused on one specific goal - to end the mass-prescribing of psychiatric drugs to children.
Read article at lawyersandsettlements.com

October 25, 2007

Glaxo cuts jobs to save £700m a year after profits slide
· US sales of top selling diabetes drug down 50%
· Tougher regulation and generics hurt entire sector
GlaxoSmithKline yesterday unveiled a cost-cutting programme that will involve job losses and the closure of manufacturing sites, as it reported third-quarter profits were hit by declining sales of its troubled diabetes treatment, Avandia. The world's second-largest drugs company said the restructuring programme would deliver annual pre-tax cost savings of up to £700m by 2010 but would need £1.5bn to implement. Chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier declined to say how many jobs were likely to go but 40% of the savings will be made in manufacturing, 40% in sales and the rest in research and development. Analysts said they expected the job losses to run into thousands.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

October 25, 2007

Heart drug may boost risk of death, FDA says
Mounting evidence reveals problems related to use of Trasylol
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that accumulating evidence suggests a Bayer AG drug used to prevent excessive bleeding during heart bypass surgery increases the risk of death when compared with other drugs. The announcement came as a Canadian study comparing the safety and efficacy of the drug, Trasylol, with two others was halted. Preliminary results from that trial also suggested Trasylol increased the risk of death when compared with the other drugs.
Read article at MSNBC

October 25, 2007

Warning Is Sent to AIDS Vaccine Volunteers
S. Africans Among Recipients Who May Be at Higher Risk of Contracting Virus
South African AIDS researchers have begun warning hundreds of volunteers that a highly touted experimental vaccine they received in recent months might make them more, not less, likely to contract HIV in the midst of one of the world's most rampant epidemics. The move stems from the discovery last month that an AIDS vaccine developed by Merck & Co. might have led to more infections than it averted among study subjects in the United States and other countries.
Read article in The Washington Post (USA)

October 24, 2007

PM hosts first Business Council meeting
Gordon Brown has hosted his first Business Council meeting at 10 Downing Street after establishing the group earlier this year. The council's purpose is to provide advice on broad issues that affect enterprise, business and the long term productivity and competitiveness of the economy. Members of the group include Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco and Sir Alan Sugar of Amstrad. Other attendees included Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone and Sir William Castell of the Wellcome Trust.
Read the UK government's press release on the 10 Downing Street website
Comment: Given that Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxo SmithKline, is also a member of the group, Mervyn Davies, Chair of Standard Chartered and of the Business Council, must surely have had the pharma cartel cracking open the champagne when he explained that: "The Council provides the opportunity to bring highly-experienced business minds into a new dialogue with government." Click here to read the full list of Gordon's new friends.

October 24, 2007

Drug threat prompts lamb recall
Supermarkets across the UK have withdrawn batches of lamb distributed by an Anglesey company because of a health scare. Asda and wholesaler Makro have both been affected by the recall. According to the Food Standards Agency, the meat might contain traces of drugs and should not have entered the human food chain.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: The veterinary drugs involved include Doramectin, which is manufactured by Pfizer. Disturbingly, a spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency has described the effects of Doramectin on humans as "unknown."

October 24, 2007

Flu jabs 'fail to cut illnesses'
Flu vaccinations do not cut the numbers of elderly people being admitted to hospital with illnesses commonly triggered by the virus, government scientists claim.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: As the article describes, additional research suggests not only is there little evidence that flu vaccinations are effective in elderly patients but that neither do they even save lives.

October 22, 2007

Thousands of Medical Students Urge Schools to Eliminate Pharmaceutical Marketing Influence
Thousands of medical students join together this week, National PharmFree Week, calling upon medical schools to ban pharmaceutical marketing influence from their campuses. National PharmFree Week is sponsored by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), the nation's largest, independent medical student organization.
Read press release at prnewswire.com

October 21, 2007

Special report: Prescription medicines
Each year, Britons are dying in their thousands because of the side effects of prescription and over-the-counter medicines. Reported deaths are up 155 per cent in a decade – and experts are seeking new safeguards. Nina Lakhani reports
Thousands of patients are dying each year as a result of side effects from pills prescribed by GPs and hospital doctors. And while the number of deaths from suspected adverse reactions to prescription drugs has more than doubled in the past 10 years to 973 last year, medical experts warn that as few as one in 10 deaths and other serious complications are being reported. Doctors' poor prescribing skills and repeated failures to recognise accurately adverse drug reactions in patients have seen deaths multiply by about two and half times since 1996. Experts are calling for a revamp of the current warning systems designed to alert doctors to potentially lethal prescription drug treatments.
Read article in the Independent on Sunday (UK)

October 20, 2007

F.D.A. Panel Urges Ban on Medicine for Child Colds
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted Friday to ban popular over-the-counter cold products intended for children under the age of 6. The panel found there was no proof that the medicines eased cold symptoms in children, while there are rare reports that they have caused serious harm.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

October 19, 2007

FDA adding hearing loss risk for impotence drugs
U.S. regulators on Thursday said warnings about the risk of sudden hearing loss linked to popular drugs for impotence, including Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, would be added to the drugs' labels.
Read article at reuters.com
Comment: A review of the FDA's side effect data found 29 cases of sudden hearing loss with a relationship to the three drugs.

October 15, 2007

Study prompts concern about side effects of antiretrovirals
Metabolic abnormalities caused by side effects from antiretroviral drugs are becoming increasingly prevalent among Thais living with HIV/Aids, recent studies have found. According to a pilot study by Ramathibodi Hospital's Faculty of Medicine, published in the Journal of the Medical Association Thailand, the long-term toxicity of antiretroviral treatment has become more recognised through a variety of metabolic abnormalities including lipodystrophy, which affects body fat, and dyslipidemia, which affects the blood. The latest study, conducted among 56 patients at the hospital, showed a high prevalence of lipodystrophy and dyslipidemia in Thai patients undergoing antiretroviral treatment.
More than 66% of the patients that took part in the study experienced health problems such as high levels of fat in their blood, high blood pressure, abnormal fat redistribution, cardiovascular and kidney disease, diabetes, and insulin resistance.
Read article in the Bangkok Post (Thailand)

October 15, 2007

Patients Warned as Maker Halts Sale of Heart Implant Part
The nation's largest maker of implanted heart devices, Medtronic, said yesterday that it was urging doctors to stop using a crucial component in its most recent defibrillator models because it was prone to a defect that has caused malfunctions in hundreds of patients and may have contributed to five deaths.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

October 14, 2007

New FDA Center Rife With Risks
The Food and Drug Administration is moving with unprecedented speed to launch a drug research center to be paid for by companies it regulates. The goal of the Reagan-Udall Foundation, approved by Congress and signed into law late last month, is to streamline and improve the development of drugs and medical devices, a goal long sought by regulators and the biggest players in the industry, such as Merck & Co., Pfizer Inc., Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, and Johnson & Johnson.
Read article at forbes.com

October 5, 2007

Polio outbreak in Nigeria sparked by oral vaccine
A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine designed to stop it, international health officials say, leaving at least 69 children paralyzed.
Read article in USA Today

October 4, 2007

Judicial Watch Uncovers New FDA Records Detailing Deaths in 1,824 Adverse Reaction Reports Related to HPV Vaccine
Judicial Watch Sues FDA for Producing "Partial Response" to FOIA Request
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released new documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,824 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil, including as many as eight deaths related to the vaccine.  Judicial Watch had previously obtained 1,637 reports relating to Gardasil on May 15, 2007, bringing the known total to 3,461 adverse reactions including eleven deaths since FDA approval. 
Read article at judicialwatch.org (USA)

October 4, 2007

Health Canada pulls osteoarthritis drug Prexige
Health Canada warned consumers on Thursday about potential liver-related adverse effects, including hepatitis, linked to the anti-inflammatory medicine Prexige. The federal agency said that after conducting a review, it will no longer allow the sale of the Cox-2 selective inhibitor drug, which is used to treat osteoarthritis in adults. The drug has been available in Canada since November 2006 and is made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG.
Read article on the website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

October 3, 2007

Kentucky Sues Purdue Over OxyContin
A group of 120 Kentucky counties, along with various cities and the state, tomorrow plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and its parent for its marketing of the OxyContin painkiller, a highly addictive and controversial med that became known as Hillbilly Heroin. This appears to be the first time that a group of local governments have banned together to go after the drugmaker. And the move follows a recent settlement in which Purdue Pharma and three present and former execs agreed to pay $634.5 million to settle federal felony charges related to deceiving docs about the potential for abusing OxyContin.
Read article at pharmalot.com

October 3, 2007

Pfizer's Steere May Be Arrested By Interpol
Here's a hardball tactic for you. Even as out-of-court settlement talks are under way between Pfizer and the Nigerian state of Kano, which is suing the drugmaker for $2.75 billion, the government's justice commissioner, Aliyu Umar, threatened to have Steere, a Pfizer director and former ceo, and nine other Pfizer employees arrested if they fail to appear on November 6 to face criminal charges. At issue are charges that Pfizer illegally conducted an unauthorized Trovan trial on about 200 children at a government hospital during a triple epidemic of measles, cholera and meningitis in which 12,000 people died. The episode led to the death of 11 children and various deformities - including deafness, blindness, paralysis and brain damage - in 189 others.
Read article at pharmalot.com

October 2, 2007

Women Not Warned About SSRI-Related Lung Birth Defect
A study of nearly 500,000 women by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, in the September 18, 2007, Annals of Internal Medicine, found that nearly 50% of women taking a prescription drug that could cause birth defects did not receive warnings to avoid pregnancy.
Read article at countercurrents.org

October 1, 2007

A Library Packed With Pharma Documents
That's what the the Library and Center for Knowledge Management at the University of California at San Francisco Library wants to create. In fact, they've already got a small version. Called the Drug Industry Document Archive, it houses reams of studies, government reports, company documents and news articles concerning Neurontin, which Warner-Lambert - later bought by Pfizer - was charged with marketing off-label. Based on their success in creating the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, which has helped legislators, policy makers and consumer advocates probe the tobacco industry, the center now wants to expand the DIDA into a full-blown resource that has endless searchable documents about pharma. Already, an unnamed New York law firm is willing to donate 20 million pages of Merck documents about Vioxx.
Read article at pharmalot.com

October 1, 2007

UPDATE: FDA Conducts Safety Review Of Bone-Building Drugs
The Food and Drug Administration said Monday it's conducting a safety review of bone-building drugs to see if there's a link to atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder. The FDA said the review was prompted by an article in the New England Journal of Medicine's May 3 edition that suggested an increased rate of serious atrial fibrillation in older women treated with Reclast, made by Novartis AG (NVS), and Fosamax, by Merck & Co. (MRK).
Read article at money.cnn.com (USA)

September 30, 2007

FDA Officials Sued Over Conflicts of Interests Part I
A lawsuit recently filed in a federal court in Ohio against FDA officials on behalf of terminal cancer patients provides a rare window into the inner workings of an agency hijacked by pharmaceutical industry giants and stacked with insiders by President George Bush to guard against any threat to the profits of his top campaign contributors. The lawsuit's complaint describes a conspiracy orchestrated by top FDA officials to basically drive a small company, Dendreon, out of business with the obvious goal of eliminating competition in what has become a thriving new industry involving the treatment of men with prostate cancer.
Read article at lawyersandsettlements.com

September 29, 2007

Ban Sought on Cold Medicine for Very Young
Safety experts for the Food and Drug Administration urged the agency on Friday to consider an outright ban on over-the-counter, multisymptom cough and cold medicines for children under 6.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: The reviewers wrote that there is little evidence that these drugs are effective in young children, and there are increasing fears that they may be dangerous. From 1969 to 2006, at least 54 children died after taking decongestants, and 69 died after taking antihistamines, the report said. And it added that since adverse reactions are reported voluntarily and fitfully, the numbers were likely to significantly understate the true toll of these drugs.

September 28, 2007

FDA Fails To Oversee Clinical Trial Safety
That's the finding of a report to be released Friday by Dan Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA didn't know the number of trials being conducted; audited fewer than 1 percent of the testing sites and, on the rare occasions when inspectors did appear, generally showed up long after the tests had been completed, The New York Times reports. The failure affects millions who participate in these trials.
Read article at pharmalot.com

September 28, 2007

Bristol-Myers to pay $515m fine
US drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb and a subsidiary have agreed to pay more than $515m (£251.7m) to settle allegations of marketing certain drugs illegally.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

September 27, 2007

Women's health group seeks ban on HPV immunization
Says studies haven't looked at long-term effects of the vaccine and booster shots
A Quebec women's health group is calling for a moratorium on a provincial program to immunize girls against the human papillomavirus that causes cervical cancer, warning the long-term effects of the Gardasil vaccine are not known. "We are concerned because there are potential dangers on many levels," said Lydya Assayag, director of the Réseau québécois d'action pour la santé des femmes. "We are dealing with a vaccine that was approved only in 2006. So, it's very recent. The clinical studies haven't looked at the long-term effects of the vaccine and the booster shots that have to be given four years or five years later."
Read article from The Gazette at canada.com

September 23, 2007

Arkansas Plans Lawsuit Over Antipsychotics
Dustin McDaniel told lawmakers two days ago that he's planning to file a lawsuit within a month seeking up to $600 million against Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson's Jannsen Pharmaceutica over "improper and unlawful marketing" of antipsychotics paid for by the state Medicaid program, The Arkansas Democrat & Gazette reports.
Read article at pharmalot.com
Comment: McDaniel is the Attorney General for Arkansas.

September 20, 2007

Deaths Associated with HPV Vaccine Start Rolling In, Over 3500 Adverse Affects Reported
As Canada, in large part due to aggressive behind the scenes lobbying, rolls out the not-comprehensively-tested Merck HPV vaccine for girls as young as nine, a look at developments on the vaccine south of the border should cause Canadians serious concern. In the United States a similar lobby campaign by the same company launched the mass HPV vaccination of girls beginning in June last year. In just little over a year, the HPV vaccine has been associated with at least five deaths, not to mention thousands of reports of adverse effects, hundreds deemed serious, and many that required hospitalization.
Read article at lifesite.net

September 19, 2007

The Drug Safety Blindfold
A recent study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that serious adverse drug events reported to the FDA were up by a large margin (260%) from 1998-2005.
Read article at clinpsyc.blogspot.com

September 19, 2007

Pharma Marketers to Spend $2.2B in Online Ads in '11
Online advertising spending by the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry will reach US$ 975 million in 2007 - a gain of 19 percent over 2006, according to eMarketer, reports Hospital Buyer. The pharmaceutical category will account for 4.5 percent of the total US online ad spending in 2007, down from 4.9 percent in 2006, according to the forecast; but by 2011 the category is forecast to reach $2.2 billion and account for 5 percent of US online ad spending
Read article at marketingvox.com

September 18, 2007

New York State and City Sue Merck Over Vioxx
Seeking to recoup tens of millions spent by government-financed health programs on prescriptions for Vioxx, New York State and New York City joined yesterday in filing a lawsuit against Merck, the drug's maker, which withdrew the painkiller from the market in 2004 because of dangerous side effects. The lawsuit, filed yesterday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accuses Merck & Company of intentionally concealing the dangers of Vioxx, and therefore defrauding the state Medicaid program, which paid for the prescriptions. The drug was used to treat arthritis and migraines but led to a high risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

September 18, 2007

Less than one-third of women aware of landmark hormone therapy study, researcher finds
Despite the huge publicity generated by a 2002 study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women, new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine found that only 29 percent of women surveyed knew about the study two years later.
Read article at physorg.com

September 17, 2007

Hyperactivity Drugs to Be Studied for Heart Risk
Drugs used by 5 million children and adults in the U.S. to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder will be studied by U.S. health agencies to determine whether they raise heart risks. The study will examine data from 500,000 patients who have taken the medications from 1998 to 2005, the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement today. The drugs, including Shire Plc's Adderall, Johnson & Johnson's Concerta and others, generated about $1.9 billion in sales during the first six months of 2007, according to IMS Health Inc., a Norwalk, Connecticut- based market research company.
Read article at bloomberg.com (USA)

September 15, 2007

Effectiveness of drugs 'overstated because of biased testing'
Pharmaceutical companies are overstating the effectiveness of their drugs, and may be placing patients at greater risk, because animal laboratory studies they fund are biased, it was claimed yesterday. A survey of nearly 300 animal-test studies involving six different experimental drugs suggested that such flawed methodology is rampant in the drug-testing industry.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

September 15, 2007

Forced by the government to go to the conventional doctor…
It can't happen here… Or can it?
On September 2, in a speech in Iowa as he campaigned for President, former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) gave a startling and chilling indication of what's ahead if his plan for government-controlled socialized medicine is enacted in the United States. Similar to all of the other Democrats running for their party's nomination for President in 2008, Edwards has made providing universal health care for everyone in America - which is socialized medicine under a more palatable, benign-sounding name - a central part of his platform. According to the Associated Press account of his speech: Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care. "It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK." He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem."…
Click here to read article by Peter Barry Chowka

September 14, 2007

UK pension funds vie to lead court action over GSK drug
Two UK pension funds are vying to lead a US class-action lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), accusing the pharmaceutical giant of misleading the market over its controversial diabetes pill Avandia. North Yorkshire Pension Fund and Avon Pension Fund, local government schemes that together manage more than £3 billion in assets, have both applied to be lead plaintiff in the case - a US term for the institution fronting a lawsuit on behalf of other investors. Although UK funds frequently join US class-action lawsuits as minor players, it is highly unusual for them to seek such a prominent role.
Read article in The Times (UK)

September 12, 2007

Bereaved Mom Hunts Purdue Pharma Execs
Marianne Skolek is angry, and she won't rest until the individuals who she believes are responsible for her daughter's death are punished. In her view, those individuals are the execs at Purdue Pharma, which sells OxyContin. In 2002, her 29-year-old daughter was prescribed the painkiller for a herniated disk and wound up dying of heart failure, leaving behind a 6-year-old son.
Read article at pharmalot.com

September 12, 2007

U.S. reports of drug reactions triple
Reports of dangerous side effects and deaths from widely used medicines almost tripled between 1998 and 2005, an analysis of U.S. drug data found. The number of deaths and serious injuries from prescription and over-the-counter drugs climbed from 34,966 to 89,842 during the study of reports to the Food and Drug Administration. Potent narcotic painkillers including Oxycontin, sold generically as oxycodone, were among 15 drugs most often linked with deaths in the study. Drugs frequently linked with serious nonfatal complications included insulin, the arthritis drugs Vioxx and Remicade, and the antidepressant Paxil. The report adds to recent criticism of FDA oversight on drug safety, including its handling of serious problems connected with Vioxx, which was removed from the market in 2004.
Read article at LEF Daily News (USA)

September 11, 2007

Long-term use of diabetes drug increases heart attack risk by more than 40 percent
An analysis of four studies involving more than 14,000 patients found that long-term use of the diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia®) increased the risk of heart attack by 42 percent and doubled the risk of heart failure, according to a new report from researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.
Read article at physorg.com

September 10, 2007

Antidepressants given to babies
Medical authorities are mystified and concerned at figures suggesting antidepressant drugs are being prescribed for children, some less than a year old. Records of the national drug buying agency Pharmac suggest thousands of prescriptions a year are being written for children under 10. Antidepressants are powerful psychiatric drugs with potentially severe side-effects.
Read article in the New Zealand Herald
Comment: A few weeks ago, commenting on a report urging that children as young as 8 should be prescribed cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, we asked whether it was possible for the morals of the unscrupulous and exploitative pharmaceutical business with disease to sink any lower. That question, it would seem, has just been answered: Yes.

August 26, 2007

Pharmageddon: the prescription pill epidemic
Britain is in the grip of a prescription drug-taking epidemic, with unprecedented numbers of medicines being handed out by GPs, costing billions of pounds and stretching already tight NHS resources to breaking point. Prescription drug use has increased by 27 per cent in the past the five years and the NHS drug bill topped £10bn in 2006. GPs prescribed 918 million medicines last year compared with 721 million five years ago, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday. Health experts put rocketing prescription numbers down to medical advances, but also point to poor prescribing by GPs, growing public demand for a "pill for every ill" and aggressive marketing tactics by the pharmaceutical industry, which prompted one MP to warn that the UK is heading towards what he called "pharmageddon".
Read article in The Independent (UK)

August 23, 2007

Docs Ignore Patient Complaints Of Side Effects
A new study of 650 patients who were prescribed a cholesterol med found that 87 percent who experienced an adverse symptom, such as memory or nerve pain, or memory loss, spoke to their doc about a possible connection. Most of the time, patients initiated discussion of a possible link between the drug and the side effects. And the docs were very likely to dismiss a connection even when literature existed to support the contention.
Read article at pharmalot.com

August 23, 2007

Big Pharma Is Only Out To Maximize Its Profit
I have been a pharmacist for a long time. I was a tunnel-visioned apologist for the pharmaceutical manufacturers for decades. Then they morphed into what is now called "Big Pharma" and they mutated. They are beginning to look like the enemy of the average American's pocketbook. Their shareholders drool over piles of cash. Big Pharma is not in existence to cure, ameliorate or treat illness first. Their primary purpose is to make a profit – period. The companies will do this any way they can. They create demand by advertising on TV. They court doctors like you went after a prom date. They do buy meals. They do give gifts. They do send people who cooperate on junkets.
Click here to read pharmacist Jim Plagakis' Letter to the Editor of the Galveston County Daily News

August 21, 2007

Minn. Law Sheds Light on Drug Companies
A groundbreaking Minnesota law is shining a rare light into the big money that drug companies spend on members of state advisory panels who help select which drugs are used in Medicaid programs for the poor and disabled. Those panels, most comprised of physicians, hold great sway over the $28 billion spent on drugs each year for Medicaid patients nationwide. But aside from Minnesota, only Vermont and Maine require drug companies to report payments to doctors for lectures, consulting, research and other services. An Associated Press review of records in Minnesota found that a doctor and a pharmacist on the eight-member state panel simultaneously got big checks – more than $350,000 to one – from pharmaceutical companies for speaking about their products.
Read article at physorg.com
Comment: John E. Simon, a psychiatrist appointed to the panel in 2004, earned more than $350,000 from drug companies between 2004 and 2006. Pharmacist Robert Straka served from 2000 to 2006 and collected $78,000 from various drug makers during that time. About a third of the drugs on the state's preferred drug list are made by companies that paid Simon, Straka or both.

August 21, 2007

Plaintiffs Find Payday Elusive in Vioxx Cases
In Carol Ernst's eyes, two years ago she won a measure of justice. On Aug. 19, 2005, a Texas jury awarded Mrs. Ernst $253.5 million after concluding that Merck & Company and its painkiller Vioxx had caused the death of her husband, Robert, in 2001. At a news conference after the verdict, Mrs. Ernst said she was pleased that jurors had punished Merck for hiding Vioxx's heart risks. "This has been a long road," she said. "I just know that it was a road that I had to run and I had to finish." But her comfort was premature. Merck, the third-largest American drug maker, appealed the verdict – which Texas laws on punitive damages automatically reduced to $26.1 million. Until higher courts rule on the appeal, Merck is not obligated to pay. So Mrs. Ernst, 62, has yet to receive any money. In fact, none of the 45,000 people who have sued Merck, contending that they or their loved ones suffered heart attacks or strokes after taking Vioxx, have received payments from the company.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

August 20, 2007

Pain medicine use has nearly doubled
People in the United States are living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it. The amount of five major painkillers sold at retail establishments rose 90% between 1997 and 2005, according to an Associated Press analysis of statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration. More than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country.
Read article in USA Today

August 17, 2007

Drug Trade Group Spent $10.7M Lobbying
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $10.7 million in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form. The group, known as PhRMA, lobbied on issues related to Medicare, patent reform, international trade and drug fees, importation and safety, according to the form posted online Tuesday by the Senate's public records office. The group – whose members include Amgen Inc., Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc. – lobbied Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, the Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and other agencies.
Read article at forbes.com

August 17, 2007

Depression is 'over-diagnosed'
Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when all they are is unhappy, a leading psychiatrist says. Professor Gordon Parker claims the threshold for clinical depression is too low and risks treating normal emotional states as illness. Writing in the British Medical Journal, he calls depression a "catch-all" diagnosis driven by clever marketing.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

August 16, 2007

Parents Warned Cough Medicines Imperil Infants
Hoping to halt the growing number of injuries to infants and toddlers, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory Wednesday warning parents never to give cough and cold medicines to children under the age of 2 unless instructed to do so by a doctor. The warning is part of a broad reassessment by the agency of the safety of the popular medicines, which have been blamed for hundreds of adverse reactions and a handful of deaths in children under the age of 2.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

August 15, 2007

Protection Racket?
The FDA and Avandia
The FDA's latest campaign to protect the profits of a drug company over the safety of Americans is unprecedented, and the organizers include a gang of current and former FDA officials largely credited with turning the nation's regulatory beagle into a lapdog for Big Pharma under the Bush Administration.
Read article by EVELYN PRINGLE at counterpunch.org

August 12, 2007

Deaths spark painkiller ban
A PAINKILLER used by 60,000 Australians has been ordered off the shelves after the deaths of two people. The Therapeutic Goods Administration yesterday announced the urgent recall of the drug Prexige, used to treat osteoarthritis and acute pain.
Read article in the Brisbane Times (Australia)
Comment: The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) made the decision after receiving reports of eight people who suffered serious liver reactions, including two deaths and two liver transplants. Six of the reports occurred since the beginning of July.

August 11, 2007

Pfizer Facing 4 Court Cases in Nigeria
KANO, Nigeria — A security guard in this dusty Nigerian city is living with tragedy – a 14-year-old son whose dazed eyes, slow speech and uneven gait signal brain damage. Mustapha Mohammed says he knows who to blame – Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug maker. New York-based Pfizer is facing four court cases – two filed by the Nigerian government and two by officials in the northern Nigerian state where Mohammed lives – over a decade-old drug study that included Mohammed's son. The company, which denies any wrongdoing, is accused of using a 1996 meningitis epidemic to push through a sloppily managed drug study that contributed to death in some and infirmities in others.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

August 10, 2007

Children as young as 8 "should get statins"
Children as young as eight should be prescribed cholesterol-lowering statins, a report urged.
Read article at metro.co.uk
Comment: Is it possible for the unscrupulous and exploitative pharmaceutical business with disease to sink any lower than this?

August 8, 2007

J&J Sues Red Cross Over Its Symbol
This can't be a good public relations move. The health care giant, which uses a red cross as its trademark, filed a lawsuit today against the American Red Cross, demanding the charity halt its use of the red cross symbol on products it sells to the public, the Associated Press reports. The suit, filed in US District Court in New York, marked the breakdown of months of behind-the-scenes talks, and prompted an angry response from the Red Cross. "For a multibillion dollar drug company to claim that the Red Cross violated a criminal statut…simply so that J&J can make more money, is obscene," Mark Everson, the Red Cross president, tells the AP. He goes on to accuse J&J of "bullying" the organization.
Read article at pharmalot.com

August 8, 2007

UK foot and mouth 'possible sabotage'
A probe into Britain's new foot and mouth disease outbreak has focused on whether staff at an animal vaccine firm may have spread the virus, possibly deliberately.
Read article at news.com.au

August 6, 2007

Under the influence
Savvy marketing whets our appetite for prescription pharmaceuticals. Consumers, doctors, researchers – no one is immune.
Read Melissa Healy's Los Angeles Times article at ahrp.blogspot.com

August 5, 2007

Drug warnings fall flat
Bayer hides bad news; a researcher doesn't, and takes heat
When William "Sonny" Morrill went in for heart bypass surgery, his wife was so sure he would recover she bought him new pajamas. But three days after the operation, the 61-year-old Sarasota resident died from kidney failure and a triple whammy of heart attacks. Melissa Morrill ultimately came to grips with her loss. Then last year she read about two studies suggesting a link between Trasylol, a drug used to reduce bleeding during bypass procedures, and the unexplained symptoms that killed Sonny. The studies fueled her suspicions. But it was how Bayer AG, the drug company that makes Trasylol, reacted to those studies – and how federal regulators handled it – that pushed her over the top.
Read article in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida, USA)
Comment: Melissa Morrill, Sonny's widow, is among a dozen patients or their families that have sued Bayer, claiming that the use of Trasylol caused death or irreparable injuries. To date, however, the FDA has taken no action against the company.

August 5, 2007

UK farm virus inquiry focuses on nearby lab
The urgent investigation into the return of foot-and-mouth disease to British farming was on Sunday night focused on how the virus might have been carried from a nearby laboratory owned by Merck of the US and Sanofi-Aventis of France, the pharmaceuticals companies.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)

August 5, 2007

Virus leak causes FMD in southern England – newspaper
LONDON, August 5 (Itar-Tass) - The source of foot-and-mouth disease found in southern Britain is a U.S. pharmaceutical company, the Mail on Sunday weekly reported. British specialists said the strain of food-and-mouth disease found in cattle on a farm in the county of Surry, was similar to the one used at a nearby laboratory. The government-funded Institute for Animal Health's Pirbright Laboratory, which is studying the disease, is located some six kilometers from the affected farm. A number of sources reported that it hosted an international drill last month during which live viruses of foot-and-mouth disease were used.
Read article on the ITAR-TASS News Agency website (Russia)

August 5, 2007

UK farm virus inquiry focuses on nearby lab
The urgent investigation into the return of foot-and-mouth disease to British farming was on Sunday night focused on how the virus might have been carried from a nearby laboratory owned by Merck of the US and Sanofi-Aventis of France, the pharmaceuticals companies.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)

August 3, 2007

Lawmaker Calls for Registry of Drug Firms Paying Doctors
An influential Republican senator says he will propose legislation requiring drug makers to disclose the payments they make to doctors for services like consulting, lectures and attendance at seminars. The lawmaker, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, cited as an example the case of a prominent child psychiatrist, who he said made $180,000 over just two years from the maker of an antipsychotic drug now widely prescribed for children. Mr. Grassley is one of several lawmakers to propose a federal registry of such payments. Minnesota, Vermont and Maine already have similar registries, and other states are considering them. The proposals are a response to growing concerns that payments from drug makers can affect doctors' prescribing habits, increase the cost of health care and, in some cases, endanger patients' health.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Perhaps not surprisingly, the drug industry opposes such registries…

August 2, 2007

Probe into cancer patients' death
Two patients at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital have died after a suspected overdose of cancer medication.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: The tragic manner in which these two patients died is a direct result of their cancers having been treated using the pharmaceutical industry's poisonous patented chemicals. Crucially, therefore, had the same mistake been made using natural therapies – in other words, if these two patients had mistakenly been given five times the ideal dose of vitamins, as opposed to toxic drugs - they would not have died as a result. Hopefully, therefore, recent scientific breakthroughs in the areas of vitamin research and cellular health will eventually make these sort of tragedies a thing of the past.

July 30, 2007

F.D.A. Panel Votes to Keep Diabetes Drug on Market
A federal drug advisory committee voted 20 to 3 late this afternoon that Avandia, a controversial diabetes drug made by GlaxoSmithKline, raises the risks of heart attacks, but it then voted 22 to 1 that the drug should nonetheless remain on the market.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: Dr. David Graham, a drug safety officer at the F.D.A., called for the drug's withdrawal and estimated that its toxic effects on the heart had caused as many as 205,000 heart attacks, strokes and death from 1999 to 2006. For every month that Avandia is sold, he said, another 1,600 to 2,200 patients are likely to suffer from heart attacks and strokes, some of them fatal.

July 30, 2007

MeNZB Approaches Another Milestone
The current cluster of meningococcal disease cases in the Wellington region has resulted in the MeNZB vaccine reaching a sad milestone. One hundred New Zealand children who were promised 'protection' by being fully vaccinated with the MeNZB vaccine have now contracted meningococcal disease. Unpublicised research published by the Ministry of Health also shows that the MeNZB vaccine actually increases the risk of babies getting the epidemic strain of meningococcal disease and does not protect babies as promised…
Read press release at scoop.co.nz (New Zealand)
Click here for a list of Open Questions for the Media to ask the New Zealand Minister of Health.

July 29, 2007

Lawsuit: Doctors reckless with drugs
Doctors over-prescribed drugs at the California hospital that is home to the renowned Betty Ford Center for addiction, a pharmacist's lawsuit alleges.
Read article at physorg.com

July 28, 2007

UNTESTED VACCINE SURFACES IN POLIO OUTBREAK
A potent new vaccine introduced in Uttar Pradesh by the WHO has had no safety tests; the rash of new polio cases in the state may've been caused by the vaccine itself, reports Mihir Srivastava.
Read article in Tehelka (India)

July 27, 2007

Scientists link diabetes drugs to heart failure
US may ban treatments used by hundreds of thousands in UK
Two of the most commonly used drugs for diabetes, which were taken by hundreds of thousands of mostly overweight people in the UK last year, are causing widespread heart failure, scientists warn today. Use of the drugs, prescribed by doctors for type II diabetes, has doubled in the past three years as a consequence of a growing obesity problem. Last year 1.8m prescriptions were written across the UK, which scientists say equates to several hundred thousand patients taking the drugs which are recommended for use across the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice). But researchers today call on Nice to think again, revealing that as many as one in every 50 patients taking the drugs Avandia (rosiglitazone) and Actos (pioglitazone) over a period of 26 months will have to be hospitalised for heart failure.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)

July 26, 2007

Confirmed: A Link Between Breast Cancer and Hormone Therapy
Breast cancer incidence parallels estrogen-progestin use among menopausal and postmenopausal women.
Read article at Scientific American.Com (USA)

July 26, 2007

AstraZeneca unveils new job cuts
Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has said it is now planning to cut 7,600 jobs as it tries to make annual savings of $900m (£440m). The firm had already announced it was to axe 3,000 positions, but has now raised its target. Staff in Britain, Sweden, Germany, France, the US and Canada will be hit by the cuts, AstraZeneca said. The firm is under pressure after a series of setbacks with drugs it has been developing.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

July 24, 2007

Slump in sales of Avandia likely to wipe £100m off Glaxo revenue
GlaxoSmithKline is expected by analysts to report a fall in revenue of more than £100 million after a collapse in sales of Avandia, its diabetes medicine, which has been linked to an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Read article in The Times (UK)

July 24, 2007

Statins could increase cancer risk
Drugs taken by millions of people to cut the dangers of suffering of heart attacks or strokes could increase the risks of developing cancers, scientists say.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

July 23, 2007

Child depression drug use soars
The number of prescriptions handed out to children under 16 for depression and mental health disorders has quadrupled in a decade, official figures indicate. GPs in England wrote more than 631,000 such prescriptions for children in the last financial year, compared to just 146,000 in the mid-1990s. But at the same time, figures suggest the rate of mental health problems in the young has not changed markedly.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

July 20, 2007

Bush To Veto Ban On Mercury In Vaccines
Clear links to neurological disorders ignored, removed from animal vaccines but fine for babies
President Bush is to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children despite its known links to autism and other neurological disorders and despite the fact that he pledged in 2004 to support such a move when campaigning for re-election.
Read article at infowars.net

July 20, 2007

Acomplia drug patients at psychiatric risk
A weight-loss drug used by thousands of UK patients should not be taken by people on anti-depressants, a European health watchdog warned yesterday. The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) said it was recommending that anyone taking anti-depressants or suffering ongoing major depression should not take rimonabant, which is sold under the brand name Acomplia. About 41,000 patients in the UK have been treated with rimonabant since it was launched here in June 2006. The Department of Health's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said it had received reports of psychiatric reactions to Acomplia in the UK. "Three hundred and sixty-four (364) psychiatric reactions have been reported," it said.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

July 19, 2007

Merck faces shareholder lawsuits
A US court has revived shareholder lawsuits against drugs giant Merck for allegedly concealing the health risks of its arthritis painkiller Vioxx. A federal appeal court has sent the lawsuits back to the New Jersey federal judge who dismissed them in May 2006. Vioxx, once a $2.5bn-a-year earner, was taken off the market in 2004 after it was found users had a high risk of heart attack, stroke and death. The shareholders group claims Merck directors covered up these risks. The appeals court said US District Judge Stanley R Chesler should have allowed the plaintiffs to amend their original complaint with additional materials.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

July 17, 2007

Are vaccines a waste of time?
Children are given 25 vaccines by the age of 15 months. But many are for diseases that are extremely rare – and which they're naturally immune to. As the doctor who challenged MMR fights for his career, the author of a new book asks if other jabs are worth the risk.
Read article in the Evening Standard (UK)

July 15, 2007

DANGERS OF MMR JAB 'COVERED UP'
Health officials were yesterday accused of covering up serious risks linked with the controversial MMR jab before it was introduced. According to a secret dossier, five cases were reported of potentially deadly brain inflammation following the use of MMR in Canada before it became part of standard childhood vaccinations in Britain. The internal documents from the Government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation also reveal reports that another brand of MMR had caused "neurological complications" from the measles component of the vaccine in the US. Despite this, from 1988 both brands were administered routinely without any warning of serious risk until they were withdrawn four years later – because of health fears.
Read article in the Daily Express (UK)

July 13, 2007

Diabetes drug side effect reports triple
In the month after a surprising analysis revealed possible heart risks from the blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia, reports of side effects to federal regulators tripled. The sudden spike is a sign that doctors probably were unaware of the drug's possible role in their patients' heart problems and therefore may not have reported many such cases in the past, several experts said. It also shows the flaws of the safety tracking system and suggests that a better one might have detected a potential problem before the drug had been on the market for eight years.
Read article in USA Today

July 13, 2007

A Chinese Reformer Betrays His Cause, and Pays
Zheng Xiaoyu once ranked as one of the most powerful regulators in China. He rose from modest beginnings to help create and lead Beijing's version of the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. But last March, locked up in the Qincheng Prison here, he wrote a short confession. "Why are the friends who gave me money all the bosses of pharmaceutical companies?" he wrote in his letter, entitled How I Look on My Mistakes. "Obviously because I was in charge of drug administration." In his confession, Mr. Zheng acknowledged that during his eight-year tenure, he had accepted gifts and bribes from eight drug companies that sought special favors: a car, a villa, furniture, cash. And corporate stock. All told, he and his family accepted gifts valued at more than $850,000 – in a country where the average worker earns less than $2,000 a year. For his crimes, the 62-year-old was executed on Tuesday, making him one of the highest-ranking Chinese officials ever to be put to death.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

July 11, 2007

HRT 'no benefit' to older hearts
More evidence that hormone replacement therapy could be harming, not protecting the hearts of older women has been published. Research into 5,000 women from the UK, Australia and New Zealand suggests women over 60 are more at risk of heart and blood problems. The British Medical Journal study backs major US research which revealed risks for millions of women worldwide.
Read article at BBC News (UK)

July 11, 2007

Pharmaceuticals sector in dire straights
The pharmaceuticals sector is shrinking, leading to job losses, rising import ratios and the closure of manufacturing plants, Business Report wrote on Wednesday. It said this emerged from the draft of the new Genesis Analyticals report on the growth potential of the sector. The study, commissioned by the office of the presidency, paints a gloomy picture of the industry. It points to government pricing policies, Medicines Control Council procedures and the small number of local manufacturing plants as the main reasons for the decline. The study has found that since 1994, 35 pharmaceutical plants have closed and the number of people employed has fallen from 16 000 in 2000 to 11 000 at present.
Read article on the Independent Online website (South Africa)

July 10, 2007

NHS gives wrong treatment to 500 hospital patients a week
Hospital staff gave the wrong treatment to the wrong patient on almost 25,000 occasions last year, leading to deaths, serious injury and long-term harm, official figures show. Errors in identifying patients led to at least 500 a week getting the wrong operation the wrong drugs or diagnostic tests, the National Patient Safety Agency said.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
Comment: Last year, the UK's National Patient Safety Agency reported 41,000 medication errors between July 2005 to July 2006, which caused 36 deaths. A further 2,000 patients suffered "moderate or severe harm." In 2005, the UK's National Audit Office reported that nearly one million errors or safety lapses had occurred in the previous year, causing 2,000 deaths.

July 10, 2007

Former head of China's drug watchdog executed in Beijing
Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), was executed on Tuesday morning with the approval of the Supreme People's Court. Zheng, 63, was sentenced to death on May 29 by the Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court after being found guilty of taking 6.49 million yuan (about 850,000 U.S. dollars) in bribes and dereliction of duty. Zheng appealed for leniency in a second hearing of his case on June 12, pleading that the penalty was "too severe" and asking the court to reconsider the sentence. He also gave evidence that implicated other officials in the case. The Higher People's Court of Beijing rejected Zheng's appeal on June 22 and upheld the death sentence.
Read article in the People's Daily (China)

July 9, 2007

Does everyone need a pill?
Pharmaceutical companies want us to play doctor. Sickness sells, but I'm not buying.
Read Joanne Law's article in the Los Angeles Times (USA)

July 8, 2007

China suspends sale of leukemia drug made by Shanghai company
China 's drug watchdog has suspended the sale of methotrexate, a drug often used to treat acute leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis, made by Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The drug has caused adverse reactions in several leukemia child patients in three hospitals of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Shanghai, according to the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA).
Read article in the People's Daily (China)

July 6, 2007

MANIA
The shocking link between psychiatric drugs, suicide, violence and mass murder
From Columbine to Virginia Tech, every time another headline-making mass murderer is discovered to have taken antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs, rumors and speculation abound regarding the possible connection between the medications and the violence. Now, reports the July 2007 edition of WND's elite monthly Whistleblower magazine, the time for speculation and guessing is over. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable, says Whistleblower's groundbreaking investigative report: Mood-altering psychiatric drugs – taken every day by tens of millions of Americans, including millions of children – actually can push some users over the edge into mania, suicide and horrific violence.
Read article at worldnetdaily.com

July 6, 2007

'1.5m wrongly told they have heart disease'
Heart disease medication is being massively over-prescribed with thousands of people being wrongly told that they are in danger of developing cardiovascular problems, according to a study. A new and sophisticated approach to calculating risk has shed radical new light on the issue. A British Medical Journal study says that there are flaws in the traditional method and suggests that current estimates of the number of people in danger of the disease are 1.5 million too high. Using the new test, the BMJ estimated that the number of people at risk had been overpredicted by 35 per cent. Consequently, many patients have likely been prescribed unnecessarily anti-cholesterol drug statins, inflating the annual £2 billion bill to the NHS.
Read article in The Times (UK)

GPs 'bombarded' by drug companies
Drug companies are bombarding GPs with promotional materials and inducements, campaigners say. A poll of 200 GPs by consumer group Which? found they received four visits per month on average from drug reps. They also received five promotional mailings about new drugs a week, and inducements to attend conferences.
Read article at BBC News (UK)
Comment: In just one month, one GP was offered nine conference places and 13 meals, and received nine visits from drug reps, 10 letters, 21 leaflets, two patient information booklets and one training DVD. This amounted to 22 companies contacting her about 31 drugs.

July 4, 2007

Pfizer Asks Nigeria Court to Dismiss Case
Pfizer Inc. asked a court Wednesday to dismiss a state-level civil case seeking US$2 billion in damages over allegations the company conducted a drug experiment that led to deaths and disabilities among children more than a decade ago. Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, has denied those charges, which are at the heart of a separate case filed by the federal government that's seeking US$7 billion.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

July 3, 2007

EU urged to fund generic drug industry
Europe must fund the creation of a generic drugs industry in poor countries as the long-term solution to the developing world’s health crisis, the European parliament will demand next week. If the European Union does not act, MEPs from all parties have threatened to block ratification of a modification of the intellectual property protection regime that protects drug patents. The 1994 Trips agreement, hammered out at the World Trade Organisation, is under pressure from Brazil and Thailand, which have issued compulsory licences for domestic companies to make copies of branded medicines. Western drugmakers say that without patent protection they will invest less in research on new products.
Read article in the Financial Times (UK)
Comment: The question at stake here essentially boils down to this: Should “drugmakers” in poor countries be granted licenses to produce toxic and ineffective generic knock-offs of equally toxic and ineffective "branded" drugs? If the answer is “yes”, then the net results will simply be a reduction in profit margins (from indescribably massive, to almost as indescribably massive) and patients being poisoned at less cost…

Vioxx Caused Heart Attacks In Two Weeks!
This is one study many people have been waiting three years to see - except Merck people. Known as Victor, the study suggests that increased heart risks associated with Vioxx began immediately after people took the painkiller. That contradicts Merck’s assertion, since it withdrew Vioxx in September 2004, that the drug caused serious heart risks only after 18 months of use.
Read article at pharmalot.com (USA)

'Bone risk' blow for Glaxo diabetes drug
D rugs giant GlaxoSmithKline faces a new public relations disaster after a study suggested its diabetes drug Avandia could lead to bone fractures in men as well as women.
Read article at thisismoney.co.uk

June 30, 2007

FDA Officials Criticized for Secrecy
For years, the public calendars of two top federal drug safety officials were largely blank _ devoid of the required detail about their contacts with the industry they regulated. Open government experts and lawmakers said it is only the latest example of the lack of transparency at the Food and Drug Administration and a violation of the spirit of open government. The FDA attributed it to administrative oversight. A review by House Republican staff found the public calendars for Drs. Janet Woodcock and Steven Galson virtually empty. Woodcock is a deputy FDA commissioner and former drug chief. Galson is current drug chief.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)

June 28, 2007

Drug makers must warn patients of risks, Justices rule
Drug companies cannot escape liability for harmful prescriptions in West Virginia by laying all responsibility on doctors, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled June 27.
Read article in the West Virginia Record (USA)

June 26, 2007

The Age of Autism: Study sees vaccine risk
A new, privately funded survey finds vaccinated U.S. children have a significantly higher risk of neurological disorders -- including autism -- than unvaccinated children. In one striking finding, vaccinated boys 11-17 were more than twice as likely to have autism as their never-vaccinated counterparts. The telephone survey of parents representing a total of 17,000 children appears to be the first of its kind -- and contrasts starkly with several government-backed studies that have found no risk from vaccines.
Read article at sciencedaily.com (USA)

July 2, 2007

Is Your Doctor Tied to Drug Makers?
It’s no surprise that the pharmaceutical industry is appalled at proposals to set up a national registry of its gifts and payments to doctors. Too much information might lead patients to suspect that their doctors are choosing costly medicines out of gratitude to the manufacturers rather than for the best medical or economic interests of their patients. The drug companies ply doctors with a wide range of gifts, everything from free lunches for busy doctors and their staffs while sales representatives extol the virtues of their latest drugs to subsidized trips to vacation spots for conferences billed as educational events. The companies also pay large sums to doctors for consulting or for conducting research. These payments, which can mount into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of years, look suspiciously like inducements to promote or prescribe the companies’ drugs.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)

June 27, 2007

The Plan to Rescue Merck!
A review of news reports about Merck, the giant pharmaceutical company headquartered in Whitehouse Station , New Jersey , reveals the company and government overseers are fervently involved in rescuing the $23 billion drug manufacturer from the doldrums of lawsuits, recalls, and drug patent expirations. Since 2002 Merck's stock has slid from ~$70 to ~$35 per share. These days, the concern is more about Merck's stock price than new cures for disease. Government agencies appear to be working hand-in-hand with Merck in its rescue effort, granting ' priority review' of new drugs and vaccines that Merck plans to bring to market and mulling over limits on product liability suits that would prevent litigants from receiving payment for pain and suffering for side effects caused by drugs like Merck's Vioxx.
Read article at knowledgeofhealth.com

Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts
As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty. How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)

June 26, 2007

Prozac linked to osteoporosis
Common anti-depressants may increase the risk of osteoporosis in the elderly, new research suggests. Two separate American studies found that people who used Prozac and Seroxat developed thinner bones than those who did not take them.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

June 24, 2007

Huge weight gains reported by patients on prescription drugs
Thousands of people who take prescription medicines for everyday conditions are gaining large amounts of weight as an unexpected side effect, scientists have warned. Researchers, who found that some patients were putting on up to 22lbs in a year, say that the drugs may even be contributing to the nation's rocketing obesity epidemic. All of the patients they studied, on medication for conditions as diverse as diabetes, epilepsy, depression, high blood pressure and schizophrenia, showed evidence of weight increase.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

Sex Virus Vaccine Linked to Three Deaths
THREE deaths have been linked to the controversial sex virus jab health officials want to give to all 12-year-old girls. Doctors suspect the jab, which protects against a sexually transmitted human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer, may also be linked to 1,700 “adverse reactions”.
Read article in the Sunday Express (UK)

June 22, 2007

The Big Profits in Biowarfare Research
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret
A number of major pharmaceutical corporations and biotech firms are concealing the nature of the biological warfare research work they are doing for the U.S. government. Since their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the recipients are obligated under NIH guidelines to make their activities public. Not disclosing their ops raises the suspicion they may be engaged in forbidden kinds of germ warfare research. According to the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms control watchdog operating out of Austin, Texas, among corporations holding back information about their activities are: Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc., Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland.
Read article at counterpunch.org

June 20, 2007

What Big Pharma Is Planning
Big Pharma must reinvent itself, to avoid a giant collapse, says a just-released report.
Read article at knowledgeofhealth.com

June 19, 2007

 Drug, Food Risks Stay Secret as Inquiries to U.S. FDA Pile Up
Claudia Krcmarik can't get documents about her father-in-law's death during a medical study. Meryl Nass keeps asking for records she thinks will show an anthrax vaccine is dangerous. The American Bakers Association's request for a paper on the safety of imported honey has languished. All filed public information requests with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at least four years ago and have yet to receive what they asked for -- even though American law says agencies must release records ``promptly.'' The FDA's 20,365 unfilled requests for information exceed the totals for the departments of Defense and Justice. One company, FOI Services Inc., accounts for 44 percent of the backlog, according to the agency. Researchers, consumer groups and individuals say the delays limit their ability to alert the public to food and drug dangers and to hold the FDA accountable.
Read article at bloomberg.com (USA)

June 18, 2007

Japan struggling with Tamiflu dilemma
Japanese officials have confirmed hundreds of citizens have displayed abnormal reactions after ingesting the prescription flu medication, Tamiflu.
Read article at physorg.com

£1m a month on youngsters’ ‘chill-out pills’
The NHS is spending more than £1 million a month on so-called “chill pills” that help to calm hyperactive children, figures show. Doctors in Britain wrote almost 7,500 prescriptions a week for Ritalin, the drug that is used commonly when attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has been diagnosed in children. The treatment costs about £200 a year per child and is likely to cost taxpayers £12.48 million this year, figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed.
Read article in The Times (UK)

June 12, 2007

Autism test cases against US begin
Suits say disorder linked to vaccines
Lawyers began arguments yesterday in the first of several test cases that may help decide whether the government should pay millions of dollars to parents of children with autism. Nearly 5,000 parents say that vaccinations caused their children to develop autism and many of their claims have been pending for five years. The hearing was held at the "federal vaccine court" set up by Congress 20 years ago when a series of vaccine scares nearly crippled the industry.