“Bitter Pill” by Ben Wallace-Wells in the current issue of Rolling Stone is an excellent, informative, in-depth article providing an overview into the pharmaceutical industry’s immensely successful—albeit illegal—aggressive marketing tactics, for selling a particularly unsafe, dangerous class of drugs—the antipsychotics, Zyprexa in particular.
Using drugs to cope with battlefield traumas is not discussed much outside the Army, but inside the service it has been the subject of debate for years.
"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." Marcia Angell, MD
A group of internal emails by Johnson & Johnson officials-mostly from officials in the company’s Risperdal marketing division-provide a bird’s eye view of collusion between the drug giant and Harvard’s leading child psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and one of Harvard’s premier teaching hospitals, Massachusetts General Hospital.
"The committee’s concerns are part of a growing chorus of complaints about the increasing use of antipsychotic medicines in children and teenagers.
Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and author of The Truth About Drug Companies, describes Sharav as an extraordinarily observant and valuable critic. "I see her as someone the research establishment badly needs."
A follow-up letter to FDA Commissioner, Andrew vonEschenbach RE: Thomas Laughren, FDA’s ‘s Director of Psychiatry Products who has been actively promoting psychotropic drugs–even penning his name to ghostwritten industry-sponsored articles and consensus panels.
Complaint about a surge of FDA administrative approvals for expanded use of highly toxic antipsychotic drugs for children. Approvals were determined by Dr. Thomas Laughren after secret deliberations–without disclosure of scientific data, without an advisory panel or open public discussion.
The efficacy and safety of a new drug that treats a serious and life threatening illness in premature infants will be studied versus sham/placebo in Latin America. The sponsor plans to apply for FDA approval, in addition to local and European registration. There are approved therapies (surfactants) for this illness (Respiratory Distress Syndrome, or RDS) in those countries where this trial is proposed to take place, and surfactants are even used in some of their hospitals. However, surfactants are completely unavailable to infants at many other hospitals, secondary to rationing or economic limitations.
FDA Considers: Use of Placebo-Controls in Life Threatening Diseases: Is the Developing World the Answer? The efficacy and safety of a new drug that treats a serious and life threatening illness in premature infants will be studied versus sham / placebo in Latin America.
Dr. Karen Effrem refutes Dr Friedman who claims there is "a silent epidemic of mental illness among teenagers."
When scientists are for sale and "peer reviewed" journals publish planted commercial pronouncements masquerading as "science" news reports, the public is advised to disregard those "news" reports and wait for the evidence to be independently examined and either corroborated or refuted.
