Guest guest Posted May 30, 2005 Report Share Posted May 30, 2005 " Zeus Information " <info Big Pharma latest...(5 articles) Mon, 30 May 2005 10:48:33 +0100 Pharmaceutical industry makes more money than all U.S. gas stations combined The $250 billion pharmaceutical industry is actually pulling in more money than every gas station in America combined, leading some to wonder if Americans are taking too many drugs. With drugs claiming to treat everything from headaches to PMS to hyperactive children, some people say that Americans are relying too much on pills. The number of prescriptions in the United States has risen a full two-thirds over the last decade. However, the recent concerns about Vioxx and Bextra have raised new concerns about the safety of all these drugs. In fact, about 125,000 people die from drug reactions and mistakes every year, making it the fourth most common cause of death in America. Related articles on this topic are also available on the NewsTarget Network, including: Hypertension caused by chronic dehydration, says doctor; but pharmaceutical industry prescribes drugs that cause further water loss. Wednesday, May 25, 2005 NewsTarget.com Wednesday, May 25, 2005 Drug companies discredit negative studies and blacklist honest researchers Just when I thought I was done criticizing Merck, new evidence surfaces that gives us another reason to discuss some of the outrageous behavior by this pharmaceutical company. The latest news concerns Merck's attempts to suppress and discredit a study linking Vioxx with heart attacks. This comes out in an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine authored by Drs. Daniel Solomon and Jerry Avorn of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who explain that even though Merck funded and designed the study they were working on, once the study found negative results and was about to go to publication, Merck pulled their association from the study and then sought to discredited by insisting that a Merck employee remove her name from the study. Now, you might say, " Well, this seems like just one more case of a drug company trying to skew the results of a study after the fact, but what does it mean in the big picture? " The answer is there's a pattern here -- a pattern of suppression of negative results. When you combine this with some of the other actions that Merck has engaged in (which have been discussed in detail on this site) and some of which has been revealed in e-mails published by the Wall Street Journal, it paints a bigger picture. What's about to follow in this essay is my own personal opinion and my own assessment of this bigger picture. In my opinion this is a pattern of suppressing negative information about Vioxx in order to protect profits. Obviously, if this negative information about Vioxx came out in the studies, Merck didn't want its name on it. The company likely wanted to only show the good side of Vioxx (the reduction in inflammation), and it never wanted to talk about the negative side effects of taking this drug, such as the increased heart attack risk. It also occurs to me that Merck was well aware of the dangerous nature of Vioxx years before they ultimately decided to pull it off the market, and it appears the company was engaged in a consistent, conscious effort to discredit negative information about the drug. This influence extended well into the FDA, where people like drug researcher Dr. David Graham now say they were threatened with being fired if they didn't go along with the FDA's wishes to approve this drug and keep it on the market. I've talked about all the ethical implications of this before, and as much as we should all be outraged at this behavior by Merck, I've actually grown weary of being outraged by it. You can be outraged once, twice, even three times, but being able to summon up that level of outrage in the face of new evidence seems to be rather redundant. Yes, I am outraged at Merck's apparent behavior, and yes, I think this company should be investigated and the top decision-makers of the company who engaged in this apparent scientific cover-up should be held not just financially responsible for the suffering and death these drugs have apparently caused, but even criminally liable for engaging in these actions. I'm sure Merck executives would disagree, although we may find the Justice Department, in fact, agrees with that assessment. What may be even more important to note in all of this is the Vioxx cover-up further confirms the character of the drug companies in our modern day environment of drug promotion and suppression of negative side effects. I've often talked about the distortion of medical studies and how so-called evidence-based medicine is really little more than scientific fraud. Merck's effort to discredit this negative study is yet another example of that. Across Big Pharma, what companies do is fund and design studies which are carefully constructed in a way that will only highlight the positive effects of the drugs. In those rare circumstances where reality overpowers the design of the study and the negative effects are quite apparent, many companies go out of their way to suppress or cover up those findings and distance themselves from those study results. We've seen in many cases how these companies have attempted to suppress the publication of these studies or have threatened the careers of scientists who have administered studies that produced negative findings. Drug researchers know if they don't produce positive results, they are very likely to find themselves out of work. You either play the game as a drug researcher and produce the results your employer wants, or you start looking for a new job. You may, in fact, be blacklisted from the entire industry if you dare reveal that drugs might actually be dangerous. Beyond Merck: the Big Pharma drug racket So the character of the pharmaceutical industry in general, if you look at the behavior and the facts that are now coming out, is that of a racket, sort of like an Al Capone mob that uses intimidation and distortion and puts profits ahead of the sanctity of human life. This is the character of Big Pharma. This character which really cannot be disputed based on everything we've seen with the evidence surrounding COX-2 inhibitors, antidepressant drugs, the dishonest nature of the FDA, the cover-ups of drug companies and so on. It would be very difficult to argue that the pharmaceutical industry today is out to actually help humanity. It doesn't mean some people aren't trying to those arguments, it's just they are painfully difficult to make. An honest person would say, " Okay, if a drug company discovered some drug was causing heart attacks, and if it had the best interests of its customers at heart, then it would have immediately alerted the FDA and voluntarily withdrawn the drug very early on in the game and not waited years. " It's also reasonable to say that if drug companies were truly interested in the welfare of the patients, they wouldn't engage in direct-to-consumer advertising. Instead, they would focus on providing information to doctors to allow them to make informed decisions about what pharmaceuticals might be beneficial to their patients. But common sense has not prevailed: the industry pressured the FDA to legalize direct-to-consumer advertising in 1998, and since that time drug ads have polluted the airways and the world of print publications, and prescriptions for those advertised drugs have risen considerably as a direct result of the advertising. The drug companies know this: Advertising works. Thus, they continue to run those ads and they continue to focus on the promotion of pharmaceuticals for profit rather than education about chemical agents that should be used with caution, and only in specific circumstances. For example: We've learned that Vioxx, Bextra and other COX-2 inhibitors were widely prescribed to people who didn't need them. They were over-prescribed, over-exaggerated, over–hyped and over-marketed. Many of the people who were taking those drugs would have been far safer, in fact many would be alive today, if they had been taking over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs instead. They also would have saved a small fortune. These COX-2 inhibitor drugs have been prescribed simply because they were the 'in' thing. They were popular; they were being promoted. Few of the prescriptions were made based on scientific fact or medical necessity. So when you hear people talk about so-called 'evidence-based medicine,' remember that most of the people whose mouths those words emerge from actually live in a world of outrageous scientific distortion. There's very little real evidence in the world of evidence-based medicine. It's largely distortion, hype, promotion, influence, corruption, intimidation and denial. So much for evidence. So much for hard science. What we see today is really just a drug racket disguised as evidence-based medicine. It is wearing the clothes of hard science, but has the character of Al Capone, and that is the system under which we all live and suffer and die today. Of course, you can escape the system by avoiding all prescription drugs, and there is a way to do it intelligently and safely. Just alter your lifestyle so you don't have to depend on prescription drugs. Move to a doctor who will help you get off of these drugs or find a naturopathic physician; and be a critical, skeptical consumer. Don't believe the latest hype when a drug ad says you won't feel depressed by ingesting their high-profit synthetic chemicals. If a drug company says, " This is the latest, greatest drug. It's safer for you than anything you've ever seen before, and it'll take away your pain, " you should likewise be skeptical and not believe that either. As we have seen recently, both of these promises by drug companies have turned out to be not just distortions, but outright lies. In both cases, drug companies were well aware of the negative side effects of these drugs and yet chose, for their own reasons, to avoid going public with the information. It's probably not difficult to imagine what those reasons might have been. It's interesting to note that two years ago, when I was saying much of the same thing you're reading here, my views were considered extreme. Today this position on Big Pharma, and the corruption of the FDA, and the suppression of scientific evidence, is quite widely recognized as the way things really operate in the world of medicine. Even the former editor of the British Medical Journal has called the industry corrupt. Finally, the truth is slowly starting to get out. People are beginning to see things as they are, and they're recognizing that the drug industry is out to do only one thing: generate drug company profits. It has nothing whatsoever to do with enhancing human health. Today, this position is becoming mainstream. Even doctors are (finally!) becoming more skeptical of drug companies. I've talked to drug company reps who say selling their drugs to doctors is becoming increasingly difficult because these doctors are no longer willing to blindly accept the promises of drug companies. So, that's where we are today in terms of Big Pharma. You might wonder where we are heading tomorrow. Let me offer a loose prediction: In the future of medicine, we won't be using these pharmaceuticals. The practices carried out today by drug companies and doctors will one day be seen as quite barbaric and rather ridiculous. There will continue to be a rapid shift away from synthetic pharmaceuticals, toward natural health, lifestyle changes, diet, nutrition (see related ebook on nutrition) and disease prevention. The pharmaceutical industry has been its own worst enemy in all of this. It has overplayed its greed to such an extent that the industry is now in a mode of self-destruction. Its market value is withering away with each passing day, its credibility is plummeting at an accelerating pace and patients and doctors are wising up to the fact that pharmaceuticals are not the answer to health. We've just seen the tip of the iceberg here. We're going to see far more pronouncements and new evidence emerging of how drug companies covered up the facts, distorted the science and misled the public just in order to generate more profits. As that happens, more and more people are going to wake up to the reality that Big Pharma is really a Big Lie. Organized medicine, simply put, is one giant money-making sham based on junk science. Overview: * Drug companies discredit negative studies and blacklist honest researchers Source: http://www.newstarget.com/007608.html All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. Newstarget.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. It is not intended as a substitute for the diagnosis, treatment or advice of a qualified professional. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. Just when I thought I was done criticizing Merck, new evidence surfaces that gives us another reason to discuss some of the outrageous behavior by this pharmaceutical company. The latest news concerns Merck's attempts to suppress and discredit a study linking Vioxx with heart attacks. This comes out in an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine authored by Drs. Daniel Solomon and Jerry Avorn of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who explain that even though Merck funded and designed the study they were working on, once the study found negative results and was about to go to publication, Merck pulled their association from the study and then sought to discredited by insisting that a Merck employee remove her name from the study. Now, you might say, " Well, this seems like just one more case of a drug company trying to skew the results of a study after the fact, but what does it mean in the big picture? " The answer is there's a pattern here -- a pattern of suppression of negative results. When you combine this with some of the other actions that Merck has engaged in (which have been discussed in detail on this site) and some of which has been revealed in e-mails published by the Wall Street Journal, it paints a bigger picture. What's about to follow in this essay is my own personal opinion and my own assessment of this bigger picture. In my opinion this is a pattern of suppressing negative information about Vioxx in order to protect profits. Obviously, if this negative information about Vioxx came out in the studies, Merck didn't want its name on it. The company likely wanted to only show the good side of Vioxx (the reduction in inflammation), and it never wanted to talk about the negative side effects of taking this drug, such as the increased heart attack risk. It also occurs to me that Merck was well aware of the dangerous nature of Vioxx years before they ultimately decided to pull it off the market, and it appears the company was engaged in a consistent, conscious effort to discredit negative information about the drug. This influence extended well into the FDA, where people like drug researcher Dr. David Graham now say they were threatened with being fired if they didn't go along with the FDA's wishes to approve this drug and keep it on the market. I've talked about all the ethical implications of this before, and as much as we should all be outraged at this behavior by Merck, I've actually grown weary of being outraged by it. You can be outraged once, twice, even three times, but being able to summon up that level of outrage in the face of new evidence seems to be rather redundant. Yes, I am outraged at Merck's apparent behavior, and yes, I think this company should be investigated and the top decision-makers of the company who engaged in this apparent scientific cover-up should be held not just financially responsible for the suffering and death these drugs have apparently caused, but even criminally liable for engaging in these actions. I'm sure Merck executives would disagree, although we may find the Justice Department, in fact, agrees with that assessment. What may be even more important to note in all of this is the Vioxx cover-up further confirms the character of the drug companies in our modern day environment of drug promotion and suppression of negative side effects. I've often talked about the distortion of medical studies and how so-called evidence-based medicine is really little more than scientific fraud. Merck's effort to discredit this negative study is yet another example of that. Across Big Pharma, what companies do is fund and design studies which are carefully constructed in a way that will only highlight the positive effects of the drugs. In those rare circumstances where reality overpowers the design of the study and the negative effects are quite apparent, many companies go out of their way to suppress or cover up those findings and distance themselves from those study results. We've seen in many cases how these companies have attempted to suppress the publication of these studies or have threatened the careers of scientists who have administered studies that produced negative findings. Drug researchers know if they don't produce positive results, they are very likely to find themselves out of work. You either play the game as a drug researcher and produce the results your employer wants, or you start looking for a new job. You may, in fact, be blacklisted from the entire industry if you dare reveal that drugs might actually be dangerous. _ The Wall Street Journal May 26, 2005 Medical Editor Turns Activist On Drug Trials Rachel Zimmerman and Robert Tomsho. JEFFREY DRAZEN, editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, has prescribed a strong dose of disclosure for the pharmaceutical industry he was once accused of embracing too closely. This week, Dr. Drazen accused three big pharmaceutical companies of " making a mockery " of a government database designed to provide accessible information about drug trials. He also joined a dozen other medical-journal editors in again warning that they might refuse to publish studies that don't adhere to their disclosure demands. Dr. Drazen has also recently written, and his journal has published, pieces critical of companies suppressing negative information about drug trials. And the journal today plans to publish a study suggesting that drug companies may be exerting more influence over the supposedly independent academic investigators that they hire to conduct drug trials than had previously been known. The study, a survey of 107 medical-school research centers, shows that half would allow sponsors of their research to draft manuscripts reporting the results while limiting the role of the investigator to suggesting revisions. In the past, taking on drug makers directly, or being seen as overzealous in trying to uphold the integrity of journals against commercial interests, has been a perilous path for medical-journal editors. The journals rely on the companies for advertising and subscriptions and want to be first to publish new findings that might come from their trials. The New England Journal says there is no sign that drug companies are striking back by decreasing advertising. The publication doesn't release its own advertising figures. But the disclosure campaign comes at a time when medical journals overall are seeing a decline in their share of advertising dollars from pharmaceutical concerns, amid a rapid growth of direct-to-consumer ads. According to IMS Health Inc., a pharmaceutical information and consulting concern based in Fairfield, Conn., drug makers spent $448 million, or about 5% of their promotional budgets on advertising in medical journals in 2003; in 1996, they spent $459 million, or about 11%. Dr. Drazen's newfound activism is especially striking since he came under fire for his own financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry when he took his current job at the New England Journal five years ago. " He's been converted, " said Marcia Angell, senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Drazen's predecessor as editor-in- chief. " Through painful experience, Jeff is learning what these companies are about. He sees the ugly side that he hadn't seen before -- the bias that company-sponsored research contains, the suppression of results that they don't like, the spin of unfavorable results. " Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry trade group, said Dr. Drazen's comments were " an unfair criticism. " " Our member companies are committed to making certain that all patients and their doctors get the information they need to make informed decisions about medicines, " he said. " They're committed to making data available from all ongoing controlled clinical trials and they have until Sept. 13 to post this information. " The trade group has been critical of comments made by Dr. Angell in the past. But one person familiar with the group said they are trying to establish a better working relationship with the medical journals. Dr. Drazen, a bow-tie wearing pulmonologist and Harvard Medical School graduate who still sees patients at the Brigham & Women's Hospital, said he is no firebrand. But he said he has a new perspective since becoming editor and witnessing more of the inner workings of research publishing. " This isn't about poking a stick in the eyes of the drug companies, " he said, adding that his only mission is to " help physicians do their jobs better and help patients get better information. " He adds that one of the things that got the editors of the major medical journals together to try to establish guidelines is that " we've all had these experiences " in which drug researchers " weren't giving us the straight story. " In September, Merck & Co. pulled painkiller Vioxx from the market after years of efforts by the company to keep safety concerns from destroying the drug's commercial prospects. In October, regulators forced several drug companies to add strong warnings about a link between antidepressants and suicidal tendencies among young people to medication labels. After regulators started probing the links, researchers familiar with the data wrote that some unflattering findings about the antidepressants hadn't been published, potentially creating an overly positive portrait of some of the drugs. Also in September, Dr. Drazen and editors for several other international medical journals jointly said that they would no longer consider publishing studies that weren't registered with a publicly- available database before the first patient was enrolled. The group said the policy applied to trials that start after July 1, 2005 and set a Sept. 13, 2005 registration deadline. The editors indicated www.clinicaltrials.gov, an online registry operated by the National Institutes of Health, was the only one meeting its requirements. This week, Dr. Drazen said Merck, Pfizer Inc., and GlaxoSmithKline PLC were making it extremely difficult to search the NIH database for information because they had not provided the names of many drugs under study. He said his criticism was based on a review of the NIH database by its director, Deborah Zarin. In an interview, Dr. Zarin said drug names were missing in 90% of the 132 Merck trials she reviewed; there were also no drugs named in 53% of the 55 Glaxo trials and 36% of the 75 Pfizer studies. The three drug companies said their filings in the NIH database are in compliance with federal law and that they are working to expand the amount of data available there and on their own Web sites. A Merck spokeswoman said some drugs are not named until late in their development. A Pfizer spokeswoman said her company's filings omitted some early-stage trials for competitive reasons. A Glaxo spokesman said his company provides additional study details to editors, physicians and patients who inquire. An asthma specialist, Dr. Drazen had financial ties to more than 20 drug companies when he first became editor. He also came under scrutiny after heaping praise on an asthma drug marketed by a drug company where he was working as a paid consultant. His statements were used in company promotions that were found to be misleading by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Drazen said he has severed all his drug company ties. In 2002, Dr. Drazen was criticized for adopting a new policy whereby doctors writing reviews or editorials for the journal could accept up to $10,000 a year from drug companies in consulting and speaking fees. Previously, they couldn't accept anything. Dr. Drazen argued at the time that maintaining an absolute ban would have made it too difficult to find writers. Write to Rachel Zimmerman at rachel.zimmerman Robert Tomsho at rob.tomsho The EU's watchdog agency, the European Medicines Agency, has just come out against Prozac for the young and adolescents. This is significant, as the Brits and the US regulators have been claiming Prozac is the exception to the rule, and endorsed this med for these kids. Warning on Prozac for children Sarah Boseley Tuesday April 26, 2005 Guardian Doctors were yesterday told not to give Prozac to children by the European medicines regulator, ruling out the one antidepressant of its class that the British authorities had allowed to be prescribed to under-18s. Prozac and other drugs of the class called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) can make some children and adolescents feel suicidal or become hostile and aggressive, the European Medicines Agency ruled yesterday. Reviews of the clinical trials carried out on these drugs with children show that they offer little benefit to weigh against the potentially life-threatening side-effects some under-18s experience. The one exception made by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which came to a similar conclusion in Britain in June 2003, was Prozac. The European decision puts doctors in a bigger quandary than before. Those who were convinced that antidepressants worked in children would have prescribed Prozac but GPs and psychiatrists will have problems offering anything else, because there is a serious shortage of alternatives. There are long waiting lists for the so-called " talking therapies " because of shortages of funds and counselling staff. SocietyGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 forwarded by Zeus Information Service Alternative Views on Health www.zeusinfoservice.com All information, data and material contained, presented or provided herein is for general information purposes only and is not to be construed as reflecting the knowledge or opinion of Zeus Information Service. Subscribe Free/Un:info Feel free to forward far and wide... 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