Authors Of Psychiatric Definitions Tied To Drug Companies
April 21, 2006
Authors
Of Psychiatric Definitions Tied To Drug Companies
“Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic
criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial
ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new
analysis has found.
Of the 170 experts in all who contributed to the manual that defines disorders
from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties,
including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood
disorders and psychotic disorders. The analysis did not reveal the extent of
their relationships with industry or whether those ties preceded or followed
their work on the manual.”
April 19, 2006
Big
Pharma Accused Of Working Against Generic Drugs For Seniors
“The brand-name drug industry is aggressively working to keep
blockbuster drugs widely used by the elderly from being sold in cheaper generic
versions when their patents expire, the organization that represents pharmacy
benefit managers said yesterday.”
April 17, 2006
Company
Behind U.K. Drug Trial Disaster Underinsured
“Lawyers acting for the six volunteers who suffered multiple organ
failure during the trial of a new drug last month fear the men may not get full
compensation because the company accepting liability for the injuries was
underinsured, the Guardian has learned.”
April 12, 2006
Healthy
People Being Converted Into Pill-Popping Patients
“You are lying on the sofa after a hard day at work and should be
relaxing. But you are overcome by an insatiable urge to kick your legs about.
As you struggle to control yourself, your kids run riot in the room. And to cap
it all, your sex life is rubbish.
Just an everyday scene in many people's ordinary lives, or the combination of
three newly identified medical conditions that can be treated at the pop of a
pill?”
April 10, 2006
U.K. Regulatory
Agency Knew Risks To Volunteers In Drug Trial
"As TGN1412 documents are made public, it is apparent that U.K.
government officials of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
did not tell the truth when they declared (in their interim report) that the
catastrophic reaction by all six previously healthy volunteers who suffered a
"cytokine storm" (or massive autoimmune reaction) almost the instant
they were exposed to this monoclonal antibody was “unpredicted biological
action of the drug in humans is the most likely cause of the adverse
reactions.”
The U.K.
Observer reveals: "It emerged this weekend that the Medicines and
Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which authorized the trial, was notified
beforehand that there was this risk of cytokine release.”
April 5, 2006
U.S.
Medical Organizations Oppose Ban On Mercury In Vaccines
“Representatives of 22 medical organizations have written to all
members of Congress opposing efforts to ban the mercury-based preservative
thimerosal from vaccines.
"Our organizations respectfully wish to state our opposition to all
legislative efforts at the federal and state levels to restrict access to
vaccines containing thimerosal, an ethylmercury-based preservative," said
the letter dated April 3 from "Multiple National Organizations that Support
Safe and Effective Vaccines.”
March 31, 2006
Parents
Pressuring Doctors To Prescribe ADHD Drugs
“The figures are mind-boggling. Nearly 4 million Americans, most of
them children and young adults, are being prescribed amphetamine-like
stimulants to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Up to a
million more may be taking the drugs illegally.”
March 29, 2006
Australia’s
Regulatory Agency Has 400 Reports of Serious Adverse Reactions to ADHD Drugs
“Children as young as five have suffered strokes, heart attacks,
hallucinations and convulsions after taking drugs to treat attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder.
Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that almost 400 serious
adverse reactions have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration,
some involving children as young as three.”
March 27, 2006
Britain
Slashing Budgets For Psychiatric Services By £20 Million
“Health authorities are secretly cutting millions of pounds in funding
for psychiatric services, despite alarming new evidence of a crisis affecting
an estimated one in five people in Britain.
In a move branded "the real madness" by health experts, debt-ridden
NHS trusts are slashing budgets and cutting care for the mentally ill.”
March 24, 2006
Global
Sales For Sleeping Pills To Top $5 Billion
“Many Americans are sleep-deprived zombies, and a quarter of us now use
some form of sleeping pill or aid at night.
Wake up, says psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke of the University
of California, San
Diego. The pill taking is real but the refrain that
Americans are sleep deprived originates largely from people funded by the drug
industry or with financial interests in sleep research clinics.
"They think that scaring people about sleep increases their income,"
Kripke told LiveScience.”
March 22, 2006
Mercury
Preservative In Flu Vaccine Disrupts Immune System In Mice
“In a study sure to fuel the controversy about the role of childhood
vaccines in autism, scientists at UC Davis have found that a preservative used
in some vaccines can disrupt the immune system, at least in mice.”
March 20, 2006
Canadian
Researchers Faked Research, Destroyed Data
“More than a dozen scientists and doctors, several of them recipients
of sizable federal grants, have been faking research, destroying data,
plagiarizing or conducting experiments on people without necessary ethics
approvals, the country's lead research agencies report.”
March 15, 2006
Six
Men In Intensive Care Unit After Drug Trial Goes Wrong
“Two men are in a critical condition in hospital today after taking
part in a drug trial that went wrong.
They were among six volunteers who were admitted to the intensive care unit at Northwick
Park hospital, northwest London,
after reacting badly to a drug that was being tested at the hospital.”
March 13, 2006
Tenfold
Increase In Decades-Old Cancer Drug Stuns Patients
“On Feb. 3, Joyce Elkins filled a prescription for a two-week supply of
nitrogen mustard, a decades-old cancer drug used to treat a rare form of
lymphoma. The cost was $77.50.”
March 10, 2006
Insomniacs Driving
Under The Influence Of A Sleeping Pill
“A new study shows an increased number of people driving under the
influence of a Ambien. Ambien is a prescription drug that treats sleep
disorders.”
March 8, 2006
Waiting Lists
Down, Botched Operations Up
“Tony Blair boasted of a job well done when maximum hospital waits fell
from two years to six months at the end of 2005, thanks to the
"fast-track" strategy of outsourcing surgery to doctors, trained
abroad, in private hospitals.
But confidential health authority investigations into fast-track botches tell
of a chaotic mess, where blundering surgeons have operated on unsuspecting NHS
patients with catastrophic results.”
March 6, 2006
Nurses
First-Line Peddlers Of Expensive New Drugs In U.K.
“Hundreds of nurses on the payroll of the pharmaceutical industry are
earning bonuses of £3,500 by identifying NHS patients who can be put on costly
new drug regimes.
The nurses are provided free to GPs’ surgeries, where they are given access to
patients’ medical records to check whether they are on the most up-to-date
drugs.”
March 3, 2006
India:
Patients Too Poor To Buy Medicine Signing Up For Drug Trials
“Like many in the pharmaceutical industry, [Dhiraj] Narula believes that
the solution to the slow pace of drug trials lies in outsourcing. As many as
half of all clinical trials are already conducted in locations far from the
pharmaceutical companies' home base, in countries like India, China, and
Brazil. And many industry analysts expect the market to skyrocket, particularly
as expanding libraries of genetic information increase the number of drugs
coming out of the lab. The consulting firm McKinsey calculates that the market
in India
for outsourced trials will hit $1.5 billion by 2010.”
March 1, 2006
FDA Allows Testing Of
Artificial Blood On Unconscious Trauma Patients
“The Wall Street Journal reports: “The FDA is allowing Northfield
[Laboratories, Inc.] to test its blood substitute without the consent of
the trauma patients, who often are unconscious.”
February 27, 2006
EPA
OK’s Dumping Wastewater From Deadly Nerve Agent Into River
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won't oppose the U.S.
Department of Defense and DuPont Co.'s plan to dump a wastewater byproduct of a
deadly nerve agent into the Delaware River.”
February 24, 2006
New
Orleans’ Poor Get Primitive Medical Care
“In the same concrete structure where thousands of fleeing families
waited in vain for food and water, they now wait for medical care, dispensed by
a skeletal staff of doctors working out of a collection of military tents.”
February 22, 2006
CMAJ
Censors,
Then Fires, Editor
“The editor of Canada's top medical journal has been fired, six weeks
after accusing its owners of censoring a story about pharmacists questioning
women seeking the "morning after'' pill about their sex lives.”
February 20, 2006
Truckload
Of Radioactive Waste Left Lethal Trail Across England
“A lethal beam of radiation was emitted from a casket containing highly
radioactive waste on a three and a half hour road journey across England,
it was disclosed yesterday.
Thousands of people were put at risk by the “cavalier” attitude of workers for
the privatized company in charge of transporting the hospital waste.”
February 6, 2006
Drug Industry
Rewards Australian Government For Backing Down
“Donations from pharmaceutical industry to NSW Labor and Federal
Liberals payback for results.
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says during 2004/5 the pharmaceutical industry and
Pharmacy Guild of Australia directed unusually large donations to NSW and
Federal governments at a time when the NSW government backed down on
supermarkets getting a bite of the $9 billion pharmaceutical market.”
February 3, 2006
Bush’s
‘Savings Accounts’ Will Hurt Those Who Need Health Care Most
“As part of its recently publicized health-care reform plan, the White
House is pushing for an expansion of controversial tax-free savings accounts
linked to private health insurance. President Bush touts "health-care
savings accounts" as a market-based remedy for the swelling cost of
medical care. But public health advocates fear the plan will widen inequalities
and allow Washington
to continue ignoring the systemic causes of the unaffordability crisis.”
February 1, 2006
American
Childhood Vaccination: Government-Endorsed Blackmail?
“For a country supposedly known as “The Land of the Free,” America
appears to have the harshest anti-libertarian laws in the world when it comes
to childhood vaccinations. To many citizens, particularly non-Americans who
don’t have anything like these laws, these regulations could be seen as nothing
more than state-endorsed and enforced blackmail.”
January 30, 2006
Drug
Company Paid Pharmacist To Push Its Diabetes Drug
“For years, Novo Nordisk, a Danish company and one of the earliest
makers of insulin, has raced behind Eli Lilly to capture the lucrative insulin
market in the United States.…
But in its race, several former Novo sales representatives say, Novo may have
crossed the line. Sales representatives paid at least one Rite Aid pharmacist
to encourage switches from Lilly products or Novo's own lower-priced versions
to higher-priced ones.… Novo also paid doctors' assistants when prescriptions
were switched.…
Officials from Novo and Rite Aid said that their activities were intended
primarily to educate patients or improve care and that similar programs were
common in the industry. Karen A. Rugen, a spokeswoman for Rite Aid, said,
"Our alliance with Novo Nordisk is standard industry practice."
January 27, 2006
U.S.
Exempts Drug Makers From Liability In Fighting Epidemics
“Hidden in the folds of the thickly pork-laden Department of Defense
Appropriations bill that slid through Congress just before Christmas and was
signed into law a day before New Year’s was a big slab of holiday cheer for the
pharmaceutical industry.
There were no press releases from congressional offices and no mention in the
news maybe no one wanted to take credit for this latest assault on the 14th
amendment.”
January 25, 2006
EPA May
Allow Pesticide Testing On Pregnant Women And Children If It’s
Unintended
“The Bush administration would allow some limited pesticide testing on
children and pregnant women under controversial rules set to be made final as
early as this week.”
January 23, 2006
U.K.
Health Service Puts Financial Management Before Medicine
“Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, will call for the end of the
"handout culture" in the NHS this week and demand that financial management
be put ahead of clinical objectives. Under the new financial regime, health
trusts will sink or swim on their ability to attract patients under a system of
payment by results that threatens the income of poor performers.”
January 20, 2006
FDA
Confirms It’s Pre-empting Lawsuits Against Drug Makers In State Courts
“People who believe they were injured by drugs approved by the Food and
Drug Administration should not be allowed to sue drug companies in state
courts, the agency said yesterday in a formal policy statement.”
January 18, 2006
U.S.
Employers Turn To ‘Mini’ Health Plans
“With rising health costs, "mini-medical" or
"limited-benefit" plans that cover only routine physician visits and
offer little to no coverage for hospitalization or emergency care have become
popular options for some U.S.
companies as an alternative to more comprehensive plans, the Wall Street
Journal reports.”
January 16, 2006
Norwegian Scientist
Allegedly Fabricated Data For Lancet Article
“A cancer expert invented patients for a study that concluded taking
common painkillers could protect against oral cancer, it is alleged.
Dr. Jon Sudbo reportedly made up patients and case histories for the study
published in highly respected Lancet medical journal last October.”
January 13, 2006
New
Zealand To Re-Vaccinate 9,000 Babies
“General practitioners are
preparing for a massive logistical exercise as they now have to give about
9,000 babies a fourth meningococcal B immunization shot.
The Ministry of Health yesterday announced babies who had received their third
dose of the vaccine before they were five-months-old would now need a fourth.”
January 9, 2006
Banned Female
Feticide Still Common In India
“More than 10 million female births in India
may have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the past 20 years,
according to medical research.”
January 4, 2006
Trolling For
Lifelong Psychiatric Patients
“In October, 2004, after taking TeenScreen, a 10-minute computer test
developed in the psychiatric department of Columbia
University, 16-year-old Chelsea
Rhoades of Indiana
was told she had two mental health problems, obsessive compulsive disorder and
social anxiety disorder. The diagnoses were based upon Chelsea's
responses that she liked to help clean the house and didn't "party"
much.”
December 30, 2005
Rising
Energy Prices Force Some To Choose: Heat, Food Or Medicine?
“Winter in America’s
coldest climates may be idyllic and cozy in holiday movies and Christmas
carols, but many of the nation’s poor weather the season in frigid and drafty
homes, forced to make difficult choices between warmth and other necessities
like food and health care.”
December 19, 2005
Big
Pharma Turns India’s Poor Into Test Subjects
“India
has been the focus of medical research since the time when sunburned men with
pith helmets and degrees from prestigious European medical schools came to
catalog tropical illnesses.
The days of the Raj are long gone, but multinational corporations are riding
high on the trend toward globalization by taking advantage of India's
educated work force and deep poverty to turn South Asia
into the world's largest clinical-testing petri dish.”
December 16, 2005
Ethics-R-Us
“If you missed the movie “The Constant Gardener” and need your fix of
moral outrage, you don't have to go to Africa
to find it. Just look instead at the December cover story in Bloomberg
Markets about America's
largest clinical testing center. Managed by a company called SFBC
International, according to Bloomberg, the 675-bed Miami
testing center has been recruiting undocumented Latino immigrants desperate for
money, housing them in a converted Holiday Inn, and paying them to take
untested drugs in studies overseen by an unlicensed medical director whose
degree comes from an offshore medical school in the Caribbean.”
December 14, 2005
Cash-Strapped
Seniors Jailed For Selling Their Painkillers
“Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail,
imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and
steel around her.
The woman who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December is
among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a
crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling
their painkillers and other medications to addicts.”
December 12, 2005
Infant
Mortality Rate Up Among U.K.’s Poor
“The health gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically despite
Tony Blair's pledge to slash it, new official figures reveal.
The number of babies who died before their first birthday is now 19 percent
higher among working-class families than the rest of the population. Life
expectancy in the poorest fifth of the U.K.
continues to lag behind better-off areas, especially among women.”
December 9, 2005
Journal
Editor ‘Stunned’ Data On Vioxx Deleted
“A top editor of The New England Journal of Medicine says that
he was stunned to find out that data linking Vioxx to cardiovascular risk was
deleted from a major study his journal published five years ago and that it
appears that Merck researchers may have deleted that data.”