Intimidation, Politics and Drug Industry Cripple U.S. Medicine

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[sSRI-Research] Intimidation, Politics and Drug Industry

Cripple U.S. Medicine - FDA Permits Dr. David Graham to publish Vioxx

Report

 

Intimidation, Politics and Drug Industry Cripple U.S. Medicine -

 

FDA Permits Dr. David Graham to publish Vioxx Report

 

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/01/05.php

 

Wed, 5 Jan 2005

 

FDA officials could not maintain their iron grip in an effort to

suppress evidence of far reaching lethal effects of Vioxx when their

actions were in full public view. FDA officials were forced to lift

the roadblocks they had put in Dr. David Graham's way. They gave him

approval to publish his findings, enabling independent scientists to

critically examine those findings and validate or refute them - in

accordance with the scientific method.

 

The collision between Dr. Graham and his bosses at the FDA provides a

ringside view of a public agency derailed from its public mission--

which is to protect the public from unsafe drugs and medical devices.

Instead of using the agency's authority to enforce safety standards,

FDA officials misuse that authority to bully and intimidate the

agency's own senior medical officers whose analyses of the evidence

refutes drug manufacturers' claims about their drugs' safety.

 

FDA officials actively impeded the efforts of the agency's own medical

experts when they sought to inform the public about hazardous drug

effects - as is their professional and public responsibility. Among

the medical officers whose scientific findings were suppressed, was

Dr. Andrew Mosholder. His February 2004 report about SSRI-induced

suicidal behavior in children was suppressed until AHRP posted it on

our website.

 

When a consciencious scientist is malligned for his efforts to protect

the public from unsafe drugs; when a legitimate scientific analysis

that has been accepted for publication by the world's leading

scientific journal - The Lancet--is viewed by FDA officials as posing

a threat to the agency; we have a major credibility crisis. How can

the FDA claim its decisions are grounded in " science-based evidence "

if the agency suppresses the disclosure of scientific findings?

 

This collision between FDA scientists in the safety division who seek

to protect the public from unsafe drugs - as is their professional and

public responsibility--and FDA management which is alligned with the

pharamaceutical industry, is evidence of a major rupture. FDA

officials who govern the agency have shown a willingness to sacrifice

safety - thereby incurring preventable human casualties - in order to

protect drug sales. This intolerable misdirection requires legislative

action to put the agency back on track.

 

As Dr. Graham states (below) " You have an agency in denial -- the FDA

still maintains it made no mistake in the approval or regulation of

Vioxx. " Indeed, on Novermber 8, Dr. Sandra Kewder, deputy director of

F.D.A.'s office of new drugs, defended the benefits of Vioxx on

National Public Television - after Merck withdrew the drug--claiming

that the deaths linked to Vioxx are " not real deaths. " [1]

 

When the public learned about concealed lethal drug side effects and

the consequent preventable loss of lives, they lost trust in the

agency's seal of approval. When the public realized that profit

margins escalated as did the body count from adverse drug effects,

public opinion of the pharmaceutical industry sank to the level of the

tobacco industry. The public is tuned in to independent sources of

information: independent analysts, investigative reporters and inside

whistleblowers have uncovered a mountain of corroborating evidence.

 

In the case of SSRI antidepressants:

 

Dr. Graham notes that the FDA's proposed new label for SSRI

antidepressants cites a " suicidality " rate of one to two percent, but

a senior FDA official acknowledged in September that that number was

based upon drug trials that " failed to capture most of the reactions

of suicidality. " But, he points out, the finding in an alternative

trial - Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS)-- " the

actual rate was somewhere around seven or eight percent, " which, as he

says, is an incredibly substantive difference from the proposed FDA

numbers in the warning label.

 

Indeed, in the TADS experiment, there were 7 suicide attempts - 6 in

the Prozac group, one in the placebo group. The rate for adverse

events involving deliberate harm (to self or others) in children in

the Prozac group was 12%, additionally suicide-related events in the

Prozac group reached 8.26%. More than twice the rate in the placebo

group: 5.36% and 3.57% respectively. [2]

 

Evidence of the hazards of Prozac and the other SSRI antidepressants

that had been hidden for decades - or deliberately miscoded--is coming

to light: the hazards include severe withdrawal symptoms - which is

evidence of drug dependency; mania; violence; suicide; and cardiac

abnormalities. Additionally, children prescribed an SSRI are at risk

of decreased growth and an unusual high incidence of conversion from

drug-induced mania to manic-depression (bipolar)--previously a rare

diagnosis in children.

 

All of these hazards continue to be downplayed by the FDA and leading

psychopharmacologists who have considerable (mostly undisclosed)

financial stakes in the pharmaceutical industry. Most of the " experts "

usually cited in the press have tested the drugs in clinical trials

but failed to disclose in published reports the negative findings,

hazardous - even lethal - adverse events that occurred in the trials.

Company officials and psychiatrists from prestigious medical

institutions--who are paid consultants or recipients of grants from

drug manufacturers - have tainted the scientific literature. They have

misled prescribing physicians with reassuring, but unsupportable

claims that the drugs were " safe and effective " when the drugs have

failed to demonstrate a clinically significant benefit, but posed

clinically significant risks of harm:

 

When questioned by about the TADS findings by Psychiatric News, Dr.

Graham Emslie, one of the lead investigators of the trial

acknowledged: " Patients receiving fluoxetine alone had the highest

riskSof experiencing a harm-related event, compared with those

receiving placebo. " [3]

 

1. See: NewsHour DRUG FAILURE, Public Broadcasting Station. November

18, 2004.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec04/vioxx_11-18.html

 

2. Fluoxetine, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy,and Their Combination for

Adolescents With Depression Treatment for Adolescents With Depression

Study (TADS) Randomized Controlled Trial, JAMA, August 18, 2004 - Vol

292, 807-820, Table 3.

 

3. Jim Rosack. Drug/CBT Combo Effective In Treating Depressed Youth,

Psychiatric News September 3, 2004, Volume 39 Number 17 © 2004

American Psychiatric Association. Online at:

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/17/1

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

 

 

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

January 4, 2005

FDA Allows Scientist to Publish Data on Vioxx

From Times Wire Reports

 

The Food and Drug Administration has given a whistle-blower scientist

permission to publish data indicating that as many as 139,000 people

had heart attacks that may be linked to Vioxx, the scientist's lawyer

said.

 

Dr. David Graham, who works in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety,

testified in November before a Senate panel that the FDA fumbled in

its handling of safety concerns around Vioxx and had mishandled

concerns about five other widely used drugs. The FDA denies the

allegations.

 

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1231-02.htm

Published on Friday, December 31, 2004 by the Inter Press Service

Intimidation, Politics and Drug Industry Cripple U.S. Medicine

by Ritt Goldstein

 

STOCKHOLM - While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is

supposed to safeguard the nation's medical products, drawing upon the

substantive expertise of its drug scientists in vigilant dedication to

the public's health, that is not the case today.

 

Documentation, interviews and recent drug debacles depict a brutally

different reality, with the Vioxx scandal alone estimated to have

resulted in 30,000-55,000 U.S. deaths.

 

" You have an agency in denial -- the FDA still maintains it made no

mistake in the approval or regulation of Vioxx, " says the agency's

associate safety director, Dr David J Graham.

 

Vioxx was voluntary withdrawn by its manufacturer, Merck and Co, on

Sep. 30, 2004 due to substantively increased risk of heart attack and

stroke. Since then, questions have been raised regarding similar

problems in other pain medications like Celebrex and Aleve.

 

Graham, who provided the figures on the Vioxx deaths, also told IPS

that -- despite the recent linkage between some antidepressants and

suicide -- the FDA is in the process of " misleading the public in

their (antidepressant) labeling ... taking care of business rather

than patient safety. "

 

Graham, whose November testimony before the U.S. Senate Finance

Committee rocked the FDA's leadership, warned that while the agency's

proposed new label for the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs

cites a " suicidality " rate of one-two percent, a senior FDA official

acknowledged in September that number was based upon drug trials that

" failed to capture most of the reactions of suicidality. "

 

A 20-year FDA veteran, Graham then noted that an alternative trial

found " the actual rate was somewhere around seven or eight percent, "

an incredibly substantive difference from the proposed FDA numbers.

 

Investigation reveals that dangers of drugs are being deliberately

downplayed, and the public misled.

 

Notably, a March 2003 report by the U.S. Department of Health and

Human Services Inspector General (DHHS-IG), Janet Rehnquist, found

that just 12 percent of FDA scientists were completely confident that

" labeling decisions adequately address key safety concerns. "

 

In his most recent congressional testimony on Nov. 18, Graham named

five drugs as candidates for market withdrawal: Accutane, an acne

treatment; Bextra, the pain medication; Crestor, which lowers

cholesterol; Meridia, a weight reduction drug; and Serevent, an asthma

medication.

 

All of the preceding drugs' manufacturers were reported declaring

their medications safe, paralleling similar pronouncements made by

Merck and Company prior to its withdrawal of Vioxx.

 

At the same time, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Iowa

republican Charles Grassley, expressed his belief the FDA was " too

cozy " with the drug industry.

 

Graham urged Congress to pursue legislation separating the FDA offices

that address drug safety from the drug review and approval structure,

arguing that creating an independent body to review drug problems

would avoid the need to seek action on problem medications from the

very individuals who had approved them, which is now what happens.

 

Both the FDA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have come

under increasingly strong criticism for alleged distortion of

research, their " cozy " relationship with the drug industry said to be

at the root of the problem.

 

'The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private

Marketer?' headlined the Dec. 22 'Los Angeles Times', which revealed

that while physicians have relied on the NIH to draft medical

standards, the agency's researchers accepted " substantive fees and

stock from drug companies ... an unabashed mingling of science and

commerce. "

 

The NIH creates treatment guidelines for use by physicians, but

documentation reveals that many of those working at the institutes to

create the guidelines were quietly on the pay of the drug companies

whose products they were suggesting.

 

" It's more than manipulation -- they (the FDA and NIH) put their seal

of approval on things that they knew were false, were wrong ...

they've betrayed the trust. Instead of servants of the public, they

became truly agents and promoters of the Industry, " said Vera Hassner

Sharav, a renowned drug industry critic whose years of work as head of

the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) broke much of the

ground for today's revelations.

 

" Now we're seeing the pattern, we're seeing that it isn't one drug,

not one company, but rather the entire enterprise, " added Hassner

Sharav in an interview.

 

What continually resurfaces is federal agencies' effective abdication

of their watchdog role, interrupted only by scientists of integrity

who have gone beyond their agency structures in attempting to alert

the public to growing dangers.

 

Economic and political goals appear to have replaced the need to

safeguard the safety of the U.S. public and agencies' scientific

integrity, say observers.

 

" Over the last couple of years, we ... began to hear reports out of a

number of the federal agencies that 'something was going on', that

research and analysis by government scientists was being

systematically censored or ignored ... or misrepresented in some way, "

said Kathleen Rest, executive director of the Union of Concerned

Scientists (UCS).

 

In an interview Rest described what she saw as a " pattern, " one of

" politicizing or manipulating scientific advisory boards. " The UCS --

whose membership encompasses much of the cream of America's

scientists, including a number of Nobel laureates -- also found

" evidence and cases of agencies manipulating or suppressing scientific

analysis. "

 

The March 2003 FDA report by the DHHS-IG, whose public release

presented only information portraying the agency in a favorable light,

was obtained in full under the Freedom of Information Act by the UCS

and another non-governmental organization (NGO), Public Employees for

Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

 

While the release of only the report's positive conclusions further

highlights the official spin being broadly put on research findings,

all of those interviewed spoke of the devastating potential of

disseminating misleading scientific data. Graham described the yearly

death toll from Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) across the full spectrum

of available medication as " massive. "

 

Both the 'Journal of the American Medical Association' and Britain's

'Lancet' have described ADRs as the fourth leading cause of death in

the United States. But despite such severe human costs, the full

version of the DHHS-IG report revealed that about one-fifth of FDA

scientists had " been pressured to approve or recommend approval " for a

medication " despite reservations about the safety, efficacy or quality

of the drug. "

 

According to Graham, " the agency (FDA) has never given a high priority

to safety. " Instead he saw its main pursuit as the " review and

approval of drugs, " adding that the vast majority of agency resources

were expended in this effort. Accordingly, those who work in review

and approval areas have the most influence upon FDA policy, he added.

 

Confirming reports of the pressures applied to government experts who

dare to speak out, Graham warned, " intimidation of scientists who

threaten the status quo at FDA is routine. "

 

He described how, after he sought the withdrawal of an arthritis drug

called Arava, his superior addressed his concerns that the medication

induced liver failure.

 

" The division director spent the first 10 minutes of that meeting

screaming at me. Basically, standing up, jugular veins bulging in his

neck, eyes sort of bugging out of his head, screaming ... basically

trying to intimidate me so that I'd change my conclusion. "

 

Arava is still on the market today.

 

Citing another instance, Graham recalled his 1999 attempt to have the

diabetes drug Rezulin withdrawn for also inducing liver failure. He

noted that while Britain withdrew the drug in 1997, the FDA delayed

Rezulin's market recall until 2000, citing a policy of " risk

management, " though Graham noted that his findings already indicated

the futility of such an approach.

 

Those marketing Rezulin " were making roughly two million dollars a

day " on the medication, Graham added, so the extra market time

provided a financial bonus to the medication's makers.

 

The scientist also described how he was given a poor performance

evaluation after providing accurate congressional testimony on drug

safety shortcomings. His supervisor at the time informed him " my job

was to please him, " describing that as a " direct quote. "

 

When asked if this meant his job was " not to safeguard the public, "

Graham replied, " right, my job was to please him. "

 

Complicating efforts to maintain scientific integrity, Graham noted

that existing federal protections for whistleblower have been gutted,

and that a current whistleblower protection bill is being blocked in

Congress.

 

Despite obvious concern over the potential ramifications for his

future, Graham emphasized his belief that " my job is to look after

drug safety for the American people. "

 

© Copyright 2004 IPS - Inter Press Service

 

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