Suicide Rate Unchanged in 10 Years–JAMA / AMA Considers Stand Against Warning Labels on Antidepressants Thu, 9 Jun 2005 A major report in the Journal of the American Medical Association shatters all claims about the effectiveness of antidepressants as a treatment for the prevention of suicide. A comparison of the…
Cholesterol lowering drug, Crestor Linked to Patient Death Tue, 11 Jan 2005 Crestor, a highly advertised cholesterol-lowering drug in the statin class–as was Bayer’s drug Baycol, which was withdrawn from market after 30 patients died of rhabdomyolysis (breakdown of skeletal muscle fibers), has been linked to a patient’s death. “AstraZeneca…
A Taxpayer-Funded Clinical Trial Registry Exists! Thu, 6 Oct 2005 A former FDA medical officer reports: A Taxpayer-Funded Clinical Trials Registry and Results Database: It already exists within the US Food and Drug Administration. But the agency keeps the vital information about drug safety secret and inaccessible. So, all the…
Paxil for Children: Safety, Efficacy Aren’t Established – Letter WSJ Fri, 9 Jul 2004 Dr. Arnold Relman, Professor Emeritus, Medicine and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, responds to a June 21 editorial in The Wall Street Journal. The editorial attacked…
Doctors Without Borders: Why you can’t trust medical journals anymore Tue, 13 Apr 2004 Related link: Hear an interview with Shannon Brownlee on NPR at: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1874563 Doctors Without Borders in the Washington Monthly (excerpt below), looks at the intricate web of collaborating players in medicine who are financially tied one…
Hoffman LaRoche Rebuffed Call to Monitor Accutane Users – USA Today Tue, 7 Dec 2004 An investigative cover story in USA Today – Drugmaker Rebuffed Call to Monitor Users–affirms the indispensable role of litigation in bringing the facts about adverse drug effects to public knowledge. Lawsuits against Hoffman-La Roche, manufacturer…
Elliott Spitzer walks away from prosecuting coporate crimes Sat, 25 Dec 2004 “After nearly three years of high-profile prosecutions of investment banks, mutual funds and insurance companies, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York said yesterday that he is ready to cede those investigations to federal regulators.” Whatever Eliot Spitzer…
Spitzer’s Lawsuit Will Shake Up the Drug Industry – Full Disclosure is the Goal Thu, 3 Jun 2004 New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer’s lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline challenges the pharmaceutical industry’s fraudulent marketing of drugs. Karen Barth Menzes, an attorney representing victims of antidepressant drug effects, told The (So….
Judge Bars Military from Forced Anthrax Vaccine – Victory for Infomed Consent Doctrine Thu, 28 Oct 2004 On October 27, a federal court ruled against the US government for violating the right of military personnel to informed consent. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that the “involuntary anthrax vaccination…
Anti-malaria drug: Risk of Suicide_UPI Thu, 29 Aug 2002 United Press International (UPI) reporters, Mark Benjamin and Dan Olmsted, have conducted a 6 month investigation of the reports linking the antimalaria drug, Lariam to severe mental disorders–including violence and suicide. http://www.upi.com/results.cfm?Keywords=lariam On May 21, UPI reported that “in thousands of…
Experiment infects AIDS patients in China with malaria Mon, 17 Feb 2003 The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that two prominent AIDS researchers at UCLA are being investigted for “taking part in a controversial medical experiment with Cincinnati physician Henry Heimlich to infect AIDS patients in China with malaria.” The experiments purportedly…
Can a Popular Antidepressant Cause Teenage Suicide? Boston Globe Wed, 6 Aug 2003 For years, drug manufacturers and regulators (in the UK and US) have falsely maintained that antidepressants–such as Paxil (Seroxat), Prozac, and the other SSRIs–reduce the risk of suicide, and, they maintained, the drugs are not addictive. An…
