Cost and Consequence: drug “cocktails” deplete Medicaid_Globe Tue, 24 Jun 2003 The escalating cost of healthcare is in large measure due tothe spiraling expenditure on drugs–many of which are misprescribed.The Boston Globe reports about one Medicaid patient who is prescribed18 medications at a cost of roughly $16,000 a year–“all at…
Not-So-Public-Relations: Drug Industry & Bioethics – is it casuistry or sophistry? Fri, 19 Dec 2003 Carl Elliott is a clear eyed academic who teaches bioethics at the University of Minnesota . He is currently a visiting associate professor at School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton….
Bush Plans to Screen Whole US Population for Mental Illness – BMJ Thu, 24 Jun 2004 A second article in the British Medical Journal discloses additional evidence uncovered by Allen Jones, the whistle blower from the Pennsylvania Inspector General’s Office. The first BMJ article focused on the Texas Medication Algorithm…
Antidepressant Use in Children Soars Despite Efficacy Doubts – Washington Post Mon, 19 Apr 2004 A front page article by Shankar Vedantam in The Washington Post examines the soaring increase in the antidepressant drug prescriptions for children, noting: “The explosion in antidepressant use occurred even though the vast majority of…
Lilly Shares Fall After BMJ Report About Prozac Documents – NYT Sat, 1 Jan 2005 The New York Times reports that Jeanne Lenzer’s investigative report in the current (Jan 1) British Medical Journal, citing Eli Lilly secret documents showing that company officials knew since 1988 that Prozac increased violent and…
Fast growing business: Unethical clinical trials in India – Asia Times Tue, 27 Jul 2004 Asia Times reports: “India increasingly emerges as a preferred destination for outsourcing clinical trials – testing of new drugs on humans – the country may also be heading toward providing the greatest source of human…
Merck / Johnson & Johnson/ Lilly-Zyprexa: $690 Million settlement / a Flowering of Diabetes Drugs Fri, 10 Jun 2005 A cluster of news reports about three pillars of the pharmaceutical industry– Merck, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson–leave no doubt that this industry has shown its disregard for the welfare…
FDA New Drug Safety Website – ADHD A Huge Profit-Engine for amphetamine-like drugs – The Street Sun, 22 May 2005 “After 25 years and 35 studies, there is not a single straightforward experiment comparing typical unmedicated children with an ADHD diagnosis to typical controls.” But science is not what the…
Wyeth Pharma Warns Doctors Against Rx Effexor to Kids Tue, 2 Sep 2003 View Wyeth Warning Letter The Hartford Courant reports that the latest warning against prescribing an antidepressant drug for children comes from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, makers of Effexor, a drug just like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil–a class known as…
New York Times Editorial Gets it Right: When Drug Companies Hide Data Sun, 6 Jun 2004 At last, the New York Times editorial board has come to recognize that: “drug companies should be forced to make public the results of all of their clinical trials the moment they are completed,…
Update: 19 year old volunteer suicided in Eili Lilly laboratory Wed, 11 Feb 2004 Traci Johnson, a native of Bensalem, Pa., committed suicide while a subject of an Eli Lilly drug experiment. She was one of about 25 “healthy volunteers” who had been physically and psychologically screened before the test…
Corporate Culture of Denial Results in Preventable Deaths Fri, 7 Jan 2005 Failure to disclose the hazardous effects of Vioxx and Prozac are evidence of a corporate culture that has run amok. Uncovered company documents – some obtained through litigation, others unearthed by whistleblowers – reveal that the manufacturers knew…
