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This week journalist Brian Deer has been enjoying celebrity status at the luxury villa of Les Pensières of the Fondation Mérieux on the banks of Lake Annecy in the French alps: The Merieux foundation advertises its financial links to all three MMR manufacturers that were defendants in the UK litigation (GSK, Merck and Sanofi), as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (more…)
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Would you buy a home loan from a Countrywide loan rep? Would you invest your life savings with Bernie Madoff? Would you ask Casey Anthony to babysit your children? Probably not. (more…)
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Since 2004, the pharmaceutical industry has paid $9 billion to settle thousands of criminal and civil complaints related to the illegal marketing of drugs that kill or injure a million Americans EVERY YEAR from adverse drug reactions (ADRs).
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24 Dec – Between 1991-2010, there were 165 criminal and/or civil settlements by major pharmaceutical companies comprising of $19.8 billion in penalties. Before 2000, qui tam lawsuits accounted for only 9% of settlements with the government. But from 2001-2010, they comprised 67% of the billions in payouts. (more…)
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17 Dec – AHRP – In 2008, 6,485 trials were conducted off shore with almost no FDA oversight. Seventy-eight percent of all human test subjects were enrolled at foreign sites. A disturbing report by the Inspector General of the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, “Challenges to FDA’s Ability To Monitor and Inspect Foreign Clinical Trials,” issued in June, 2010, (more…)
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6 Dec – Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? (more…)
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19 Nov – In the pharmaceutical industry’s rush to get drugs to market, safety usually comes last. Long studies to truly assess a drug’s risks just delay profits after all — and if problems do emerge after medication hits the market, settlements are usually less than profits. Remember, Vioxx still made money. (more…)
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No scalp would be as treasured by Republicans this fall as that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And no incumbent is receiving as much air support from the drug industry as is Reid, who championed a health care bill that pads drug company profits. (more…)
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By the time Melody Petersen gets around to interviewing Iowa’s state nosologist near the end of “Our Daily Meds,” the facts that she cites don’t even sound that grim. The nosologist’s job is to catalog Iowa’s deceased according to cause of death. He processes about 27,000 death certificates a year. And by his reckoning there were only five deaths caused by adverse reactions to prescription drugs in 2002. That low figure is jarringly out of whack with Ms. Petersen’s investigative reporting (more…)
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6 Dec – Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? (more…)
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19 Nov – In the pharmaceutical industry’s rush to get drugs to market, safety usually comes last. Long studies to truly assess a drug’s risks just delay profits after all — and if problems do emerge after medication hits the market, settlements are usually less than profits. Remember, Vioxx still made money. (more…)
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No scalp would be as treasured by Republicans this fall as that of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And no incumbent is receiving as much air support from the drug industry as is Reid, who championed a health care bill that pads drug company profits. (more…)
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By the time Melody Petersen gets around to interviewing Iowa’s state nosologist near the end of “Our Daily Meds,” the facts that she cites don’t even sound that grim. The nosologist’s job is to catalog Iowa’s deceased according to cause of death. He processes about 27,000 death certificates a year. And by his reckoning there were only five deaths caused by adverse reactions to prescription drugs in 2002. That low figure is jarringly out of whack with Ms. Petersen’s investigative reporting (more…)
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