“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.
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.
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 re-prioritization of rapid approvals occurred at the expense of drug safety standards,
A First Amendment lawyer challenges the rationale given by Judge Jack Weinstein for sealing the Zyprexa documents in the first place.
A new century has bred a group of young educated people openly supporting each other in a bid to consolidate their strengths:
Overshadowing all other health related news, a front page report in The Washington Post and the just released Breckenridge report evaluating FDA's abysmal performance on drug safety, http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/latest-report-blasts-fda-bungling-drug.html require Congressional action.
This young child represents millions of children in the United States who are falling prey to licensed, but irresponsible prescribers of toxic drugs.
The deceptive marketing of antipsychotic drugs has prompted new advocacy group to launch "The Just Say "Know" to Prescription Drugs Campaign." Its goal is to get one million people to stop and reevaluate the medications they are taking.
“To me one of the miracle of children’s brains is that we don’t see more harm from these treatments.”
