prescription drug abuse « Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

July 21, 2009

OxyContin A Major Factor In World’s Deadliest Pandemic

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 9:52 am

If anything deserves to be called a pandemic, it’s the scourge of prescription drug addiction, especially opioid painkillers, and particularly OxyContin.

I’ve been wondering about pandemics and mass deaths lately. It’s a morbid kind of preoccupation, but reading the daily news can do that to a person.

I’ve been observing, like you, like everyone, how governments around the world, prodded along by the World Health Organization and a fairly steady media frenzy, are gearing up at great public expense to do battle with the H1N1 “swine flu” viral infection. And I’ve been comparing all the noise and fanfare surrounding the so-called “swine flu pandemic” with the complacent foot-dragging here and in most other Western nations regarding drug addiction and abuse, by far and away the deadliest pandemic in the history of mankind.

If one counts, as one must, that drug addiction and abuse has continued to rage uninterrupted and effectively untreated for decades, and one also factors in the widespread devastation and sheer numbers of injuries and deaths — hundreds of thousands here, millions around the world — there can be no argument as to its status as a pandemic.

No one knows for sure how many hundreds of billions of world-wide law-enforcement tax dollars have been thrown at it in vain. And if you count medical and productivity losses, we must be looking at $trillions.

I’m just guessing. But maybe some study somewhere, some United Nations or WHO study, has accurate figures of the total costs, both financial and human, of the most ignored pandemic in our history.

So far, swine flue has sickened some 28,000 or so people in the entire world. And in all the world only 144 people have died. These figures are roughly parallel to those appearing in studies and media reports concerning just prescription drug abuse in the U.S., never mind the rest of the world, and that’s before adding in the common illicit street drugs. And that’s for every year for a quarter of a century or more.

In the past decade alone, prescription drug addiction and abuse has taken many thousands of lives, and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.

If that’s not a pandemic, nothing is. And the most abused, most dangerous drugs, are the opioid painkillers. These are the root viruses that are driving and spreading the prescription drug pandemic.

In the U.S. at least, one prescription opioid painkiller could easily make a bid for the dubious distinction of the leading cause of death, injury, and family devastation of all of them — Purdue Pharma’s notoriously addictive and harmful OxyContin.

OxyContin is featured daily in news reports from around the country about dead babies, dead mothers, dead fathers, dead brothers and sisters, dead uncles and aunts, dead cousins and friends, dozens of arrests, drugstore robberies, even a murder or two, every day, somewhere in America.

OxyContin has addicted, injured and killed so many people for so many years, that Americans are sick and tired of it. The fact that the company, Purdue Pharma, along with several of its executives, was fined $634 million for lying about its addictiveness, and that no one went to jail, has America up in arms.

A petition calling on the FDA to ban it from the marketplace, and revert to any of several equally effective and less dangerous drugs to control chronic pain, has appeared on the internet. Sponsored by a concerned pharmacist and a drug detox specialist, the petition has already attracted nearly 3,000 signatures.

We urge you to sign the petition. And you should browse the brief stories from hundreds of signatories who describe their personal tragedies, and occasional triumphs, concerning OxyContin.

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July 2, 2009

How Many People Have To Die Before The FDA Takes Action?

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 9:06 am

The “King of Pop” Michael Jackson is dead at only 50, joining many other celebrities, and thousands of others, who’s untimely deaths have been associated with painkillers like Demerol and OxyContin. What is it going to take for the FDA to end the prescription drug carnage in this country, especially the deadly OxyContin epidemic?

The unexpected and tragic death of Michael Jackson, allegedly addicted to painkillers for some 20 years or more, emphasizes the urgency with which the FDA should address the problems surrounding this country’s lax prescribing regulations, easy availability, and widespread abuse of opioid painkillers like OxyContin.

Early reports of the pop star dying less than an hour after receiving an injection of pethidine, or Demerol as it is better known, have since been denied by lawyer representing the pop star’s doctor. Whether true or false, numerous cases of sudden cardiac arrest have been traced to “serotonin syndrome”, a sudden, overwhelming and toxic excess of serotonin activity that can lead to failure of the central nervous system, which can then progress to cardiac arrest.

Serotonin syndrome, or toxicity, can be caused by dozens of drugs, including prescription drugs, over-the-counter remedies, and popular herbal preparations. Whether used therapeutically or recreationally, they can either bring about the deadly condition directly, or inadvertently through interactions with other drugs.

Jackson family members, friends, employees and co-workers have all been quoted in the media about Jackson’s long-term dependence on various prescription drugs. Some have alleged abuse, and even addiction, especially to opioid painkillers like Demerol and OxyContin. The star’s drug use was reportedly to help relieve chronic back and leg pain caused by dance injuries.

The drugs most commonly associated with serotonin toxicity include:

* Opioid painkillers
* Antidepressants
* Central nervous system stimulants
* Triptans
* Psychedelics
* Various Herbs
* Numerous other drugs and remedies

Jackson, who reliable family sources are saying suffered from a 20-year addiction to Demerol, OxyContin and other opioid painkillers, was also reportedly taking benzodiazepines and/or antidepressants along with the painkillers before his death.

Dr. Deepak Chopra, spiritual adviser and physician, and a friend of Jackson’s for many years, told Canada’s CTV News last weekend that the pop star sought and found supplies of narcotics from multiple physicians. Chopra said his suspicions that the singer was addicted were aroused in 2005, when Jackson asked him for drugs. Chopra says he refused, but learned later that Jackson was “able to find enabling physicians who co-operated with him. That’s something that people who are addicted are very good at.”

$50,000 A Year Prescription Drug Bill?

In a related story, the Associated Press reported back in January that Jackson owed a Beverly Hills pharmacy $101,926 for prescription drugs, covering roughly the years 2005 and 2006, a debt the pop star finally settled in 2007. This represents annual prescription drug costs of over $50,000! The average senior with chronic conditions in the U.S. spends an average of about $2,000 a year for prescriptions, the AP said. Whether addicted or physically dependent, there can be little doubt that the singer was consuming plenty of prescription drugs during the years, months, days and probably the hours leading up to his death.

Many questions remain about the exact cause of Jackson’s death. Toxicology screens will take four to six weeks, according to the Los Angeles medical examiner’s office. Should it be shown that the singer died from cardiac arrest, as has already been indicated, it will be no surprise to learn that serotonin syndrome, or some other central nervous system failure, will be directly attributed to prescription drugs — if not the pethidine he was alleged to have taken, then another opioid painkiller like OxyContin, or some lethal combination of drugs.

The most famous serotonin syndrome death occurred in New York in 2003, when the daughter of a prominent New York family, Libby Zion, died of cardiac arrest following treatment with pethidine by weary, overworked doctors who failed to first establish whether or not Libby was taking any other medications. It turned out she was, which led to a fatal drug interaction. The result was new state legislation, dubbed “the Libby Zion law”, regulating the number of hours that physicians can remain on post in New York State hospitals.

Pethidine acts exactly like morphine in some ways, affecting the same receptors in the brain. In many countries of the world, including Australia, the use of pethidine has been severely limited, or banned completely. The FDA should provide at least as good protection from deadly opioid painkillers for American citizens.

Deaths across the country have soared dramatically in recent years from prescription opioids, with OxyContin the most flagrantly abused. Deaths, widespread addiction and ruined lives from OxyContin dwarf those associated with any other opioid painkiller. The active component of OxyContin, called oxycodone, has been found to be even more likely to cause dangerous drug interactions than even pethidine and most other, if not all other, opioid painkillers.

For these reasons, a petition calling on the FDA to ban OxyContin, sponsored by a concerned pharmacist and a drug detox specialist who routinely sees the worst that OxyContin can do, has attracted nearly 3,000 signatures. We urge everyone who wants to see an end to the OxyContin carnage to sign the petition. And be sure to read some of the dozens and dozens of harrowing accounts from signatories, who share the personal tragedies that OxyContin has wrought in their lives.

The FDA is already holding public hearings on the problems associated with OxyContin. Enough signatures can help motivate the FDA to take steps to curtail, or better, outright ban this dangerous drug.

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June 10, 2009

Movement To Ban OxyContin Gathering Momentum

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, heroin addiction, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 2:19 pm

Massachusetts State Senator Steven Tolman calls the OxyContin / heroin problem in his state a deadly epidemic.

In an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe recently, Steven A. Tolman, Democratic senator from Brighton, Mass., called the OxyContin and heroin addiction problem in his state “the deadly epidemic no one’s addressing”.

Sen. Tolman describes the widespread horror caused by OxyContin and heroin — essentially interchangeable drugs — and how the lack of available treatment is causing devastation.

“Recently, the OxyContin and Heroin Commission, established during the 2007-2008 legislative session, held the second in a series of public hearings throughout the state,” Tolman writes. “The commission’s purpose is to investigate the levels of addiction to OxyContin and heroin, study the laws regarding treatment, gauge the epidemic’s cost on state services, and offer solutions.

“We’ve heard from parents who have emptied bank accounts or remortgaged homes paying for private treatment because insurance won’t cover long-term care. Families have described reviving their dying children with Narcan [ed.: a brand of naloxone, a drug used to counter the effects of opioid overdose] or having them arrested for felony drug charges to get them off the streets. Otherwise good people appear in our courtrooms, end up in jail or the ER, or spend a lifetime on harm-reduction medication because there is no clear path to recovery,” he added.

Tolman’s experience in Massachusetts is mirrored in almost every state in the Union. The facts are, of course, that OxyContin is molecularly almost identical to illegal heroin, is just as addictive as heroin, is metabolized in the body into morphine (another illegal drug), and has become in many parts of the country the main gateway drug to heroin, and even preferred by long-time heroin addicts to heroin itself.

Back in February, at a public meeting called by the FDA’s Opioid Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS), Novus Detox’s medical director Steve Hayes asked the panel the same question he had been asked by a Novus patient coming off OxyContin:

“If heroin is illegal, why is OxyContin legal?”

No one on the FDA panel had an answer.

If you don’t have an answer either, you should take yourself right now to Ban OxyContin and sign the petition. More than 2,600 others have already done so.

And if you’re in doubt about signing the petition, read through some of the hundreds of comments left by petitioners telling stories of devastation and death at the hands of OxyContin.

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April 6, 2009

Study Shows ADHD Drug Researchers Played Down Negative Findings

Filed under: pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 2:02 pm

Ignoring both the ethics of drugging of America’s children and the actual need and effectiveness of the drugs, a new federal study points out that researchers downplayed long-term use of ADHD drugs being not only ineffective, but also physically dangerous.

A story in the Washington Post says a large federal study has reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder and is drawing accusations that members of the research team sought to play down evidence that the medications not only do little good beyond 24 months, but also indicate long-term use of the drugs can stunt a child’s growth.

“The latest data paint a very different picture than the study’s positive initial results, reported in 1999,” the Post reports.

As Alison Bass points out in her blog commenting on the article, the researchers conducting the federal study since the late 1990s “learned by 2007 that drugs like Concerta and Adderall are not effective in treating ADHD over the long term (i.e., the children in the drug group did no better than a control group who received no medication). The 2007 follow-up study also showed that children who took these drugs for 36 months averaged an inch shorter in height, and weighed six pounds less than those who did not.”

Yet the public was never told, and the drugs continued to be prescribed by the millions of doses a year.

Alison Bass says she “wondered whether any of the researchers in this study, some of whom continue to minimize the drugs’ negative effects, were getting paid on the side by the companies who sell them. Sure enough, a quick glance at the latest published results of the federal study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry show that seven of the principal researchers disclosed myriad conflicts of interest. For example, Peter Jensen, the former Columbia University researcher who so fervently defends the drugs in The Post article reports receiving consulting and speaking fees from Shire (which makes Adderall), Janssen (which makes Concerta) and a host of other drug companies.”

“Indeed,” Alison adds, “the list of conflicts disclosed by these researchers takes up a sizable chunk of fine print at the end of the [Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry] article.”

No one knows for sure how these drugs reduce height and weight. No one knows what ADHD even is, or if it even can be scientifically proven to exist. And no one can state categorically that these drugs do not create other, as yet unknown, negative effects in people.

Drugging helpless, defenseless children is so abominably criminal that I find it almost impossible to discuss rationally. For thousands of years, recalcitrant children or those who acted or appeared to act in ways incompatible with the general run of a classroom or a family were dealt with in many ways, some better, some ok, some not so good. But we didn’t enslave them to drugs. And we didn’t scar them with the vicious idea that there’s something innately, inherently, wrong with them.

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December 22, 2008

Book Report: ‘Side Effects’ by Alison Bass

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 12:22 pm

‘Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and A Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial’ by Boston Globe medical reporter Alison Bass, says USA Today, “is both a public-policy primer and a compelling account of how seeming miracle cures are sometimes death sentences.”

In her new book ‘Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and A Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial’, Boston Globe reporter Alison Bass examines Big Pharma’s efforts to sell blockbuster drugs with little heed for patient safety, by zeroing in on a groundbreaking trial and the drama of the personal stories surrounding the case.

Reviews of this book are so uniformly praiseworthy and extraordinarily positive that I can’t wait for my copy to arrive — I’m recommending it even before reading it, based on my ongoing admiration for her reporting, her insightful blog, and reviews like these:

“When Alison Bass was reporting for the Boston Globe in the 1990s, she began gathering string for the rope she has skillfully twined around drug companies and the psychiatric profession in Side Effects . . . Her narrative bristles with data without fraying into tedium. And she underlines the gravity of hiding patients’ injuries. Side Effects is long-form journalism at its best.” — The Washington Post

“Side Effects lays out the compelling drama of how New York’s then-attorney general Elliot Spitzer — before his downfall while state governor — charged GlaxoSmithKline with fraud for deceiving doctors about its blockbuster antidepressant, paroxetine (Paxil). Writing with a novelist’s touch and honing her material for its underside, Bass has produced a gripping whodunit replete with dead bodies, hidden documents, public monies spent on nonexistent studies and even a sham court verdict.” — The Canadian Medical Association Journal

“In her new book Alison Bass obeys the most important rule of investigative journalism: She follows the money wherever it leads. In “Side Effects,” her examination of mammoth pharmaceutical companies and their pursuit of profits at any cost, she exposes the dark web of researchers, doctors, and regulators feeding at the Big Pharma trough and undermining public health in the process . . . Meanwhile, it took the New York attorney general’s office to compel GlaxoSmithKline to publicly disclose Paxil’s link to suicidal thoughts. Bass provides a dramatic account of this lawsuit, following state attorney Rose Firestein as she digs up evidence of Glaxo’s deceptive conduct. — The Boston Globe

“Alison Bass, a former medicine, science, and technology reporter at The Boston Globe, has put on trial in her book far more than just a bestselling antidepressant — she has used the case of Paxil to expose the unsavory and self-serving relationships among members of the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatrists, and members of the FDA. And she does it in a book that has the brio of a crime thriller . . . Bass’s riveting and well-researched account of these disturbing ties should be widely read by members of the medical profession, many of whom continue to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they are immune to the influence of drug companies.” — New England Journal of Medicine (pdf)

“Side Effects, by investigative journalist Alison Bass, grapples with the controversy over drugs used to treat depression, with a focus on Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft . . . Bass’ book humanizes the controversy in a way that makes the statistical arguments come alive. Because of her research and storytelling skills, a book exists that is both a public-policy primer and a compelling account of how seeming miracle cures are sometimes death sentences.” — USA Today

Alison Bass an award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and long-time medical writer for The Boston Globe. Her articles and essays have also appeared in numerous other newspapers and magazines around the country. She is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Mount Holyoke College and an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Brandeis University.

‘Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and A Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial’
By Alison Bass, Algonquin Books, June 17, 2008

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November 24, 2008

Comedian Stephen Colbert Takes A Hilarious Whack At Big Pharma

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse — Rod Malcolm @ 10:53 am

AstraZeneca’s ‘Jupiter’ Crestor study for treating inflammation associated with cardiovascular events gets a very funny review from the Comedy Central comedian.

Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert of ‘The Colbert Report’ reported last week that the Jupiter trial for AstraZeneca’s Crestor “is a great breakthrough in the battle to find things to prescribe to people who don’t need them.”

Saying he crushes statin drugs on his bacon-chili-cheese corn dogs, Colbert added: “True, the drug costs $100 a month, but that is a small price to pay to not have the heart attack that there’s no way of knowing that you would have had.”

And “if you are still hesitant to medicate yourself when you’re healthy, Prescott introduces VaxaCrest which eliminates your concerns about taking Crestor for no reason by dramatically increasing your cholesterol count until your heart is pumping liquid nacho cheese.”

VaxaCrest is just one of several fictitious drugs from ‘Prescott Pharmaceuticals’, all dreamed up by the show’s writers, and complete with sample bottles, realistic labels, and lists of ridiculous-sounding side effects.

For example, Colbert warns that the side effects of VaxaCrest “may include fallopian tape worms, runaway gums, and Mind of Mencia.” (Mind of Mencia is a Comedy Central show starring Latino comedian Carlos Mencia.)

During the segment on Crestor, Colbert plays a brief clip of Stanford cardiologist Mark Hlatky urging a cautious approach to the Jupiter study. Hlatky does have serious concerns about the study, but Colbert quips: “It sounds like someone hasn’t gotten enough free Crestor pens!”

On the same show, Colbert also pokes fun at women’s hormone drugs, including birth control, fertility and post-menopausal hormones, again offering another solution from ‘Prescott Pharmaceuticals’ called GynoMorph.

“Don’t forget that GynoMorph can solve a woman’s hormonal problems with — more hormones! You can take hormones when you can’t have babies. Then, when you want to have babies, you can take different hormones. Then, when your body can’t have babies anymore, you can take other hormones to make your body feel like it did when you could have babies, but didn’t — because you were taking hormones! GynoMorph is a hormone that will gradually turn you into a dude!”

Scientific American was so impressed by Colbert’s piece, it recommends (tongue in cheek) that he be added to the list of candidates for FDA Commissioner by the new Obama administration.

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November 7, 2008

Glaxo Axing 1000 US Sales Reps By Year’s End

Filed under: Big Pharma, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 1:22 pm

Joining the pharma ‘streamlining’ trend, GlaxoSmithKline will cut 1,800 sales jobs, but reassignment to vaccine sales will mean a net loss of about 1000 jobs.

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline PLC is following a Big Pharma trend to cut staff and trim operations. GSK will start with the elimination of 1,000 U.S. sales jobs, and consolidation of U.S headquarter operations from two locations to one.

GSK currently has about 8,500 U.S. sales reps. The plan is to cut 1,800 sales reps, but add 800 to its vaccine sales force, leaving a net of about 7,500 reps. The company employs 22,500 people in the U.S., and 100,000 worldwide,

The firm’s dual U.S. headquarters, in Philadelphia, PA, and Research Triangle Park, N.C., will be consolidated at the N.C. facilities. GSK spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne said the change will eliminate confusion and is largely symbolic, and includes no plans to reduce Philadelphia staff.

“The goal is to build a business that’s more streamlined, that’s more customer focused, that meets the challenge of the current marketplace and is better prepared to manage the future portfolio of medicines,” Rhyne said.

The company announcement also says there will be an unspecified number of other jobs lost among sales management and sales support staff. Workers losing jobs are being told this week, and will be gone by the end of the year.

So far this year, job cuts – some of them surprisingly heavy — have been announced by Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wyeth, Pfizer, Merck, Schering-Plough and others.

David Heupel, pharmaceuticals portfolio manager at Thrivent Large Cap Growth Fund, told the Associated Press that GSK’s move continues an industry-wide trend to reduce expenses in sales and marketing, supply purchases, manufacturing and even R&D. He said that ‘right-sizing’ is healthy for the industry.

“You’re going to see plenty more of this as these businesses mature over the next several years,” Heupel said, referring to patent expirations, pricing pressures, and other factors affecting revenue.

GSK’s outlook wasn’t helped recently when the American Diabetes Association and its European counterpart removed Avandia from their recommended treatments last month. And last week, consumer watchdog group Public Citizen urged the Feds to ban Avandia because of its links to heart and liver damage.

Another factor in Big Pharma’s downsizing may be indications that an Obama administration will push for regulated lower drug prices, including negotiating Medicare prices. These and other considerations about Obama’s intentions regarding health care led Big Pharma, traditionally a strong Republican supporter, to contribute unusually heavily to the Democratic campaign — about equal to the McCain coffers.

It appears that as the polls continued to rise in favor of the Democratic candidate, Big Pharma wanted to make sure it had a favorable hand in the Obama pocket when the new president takes office.

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October 8, 2008

FDA Ruling On Kids’ Cough And Cold Medicines Could Take Years

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse — Rod Malcolm @ 8:51 am

Rejecting evidence from pediatricians and consumer health groups for an outright ban, the agency’s plans to rewrite regulations will go forward — but that could take years.

At a day-long public hearing last week to solicit views about how the rules governing children’s cough and cold medications should be changed, consumer health activists and medical experts urged the FDA to pull the remedies off the market, or make them available only by prescription.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency rejected the plea for an outright ban, but says will go forward with plans to rewrite the decades-old regulations covering how the remedies are marketed for children. The public hearing was a follow-up of a recommendation made a year ago by an FDA advisory panel that concluded no evidence supports the effectiveness of OTC cough and cold medicines for children. In fact, the panel said, OTC cold medicines should not be given to infants and children younger than 6 years old.

New regulations could result in a more stringent requirements, such as requiring drug makers to seek approvals similar to prescription drugs. But that could take years, and until then the dangerous drugs will remain on the shelves.

An estimated 95 million packages of kids’ OTC cold medicines are sold each year in the US. Popular brands include Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol Plus Cold, Novartis AG’s Triaminic and Wyeth’s Robitussin, according to industry estimates.

The FDA’s John Jenkins, director of the Office of New Drugs, said the current system governing OTC cold and cough products, which is decades old, was designed to “grandfather” the OTC medicines already on the market since the 1960s.

The system allows certain active ingredients (such as those in decongestants) to be legally marketed without obtaining prior FDA approval for each individual product.

Big Pharma already voluntarily withdrew cold and cough medicines aimed at kids under 2 — but it was only marketing and labels, not much of a product withdrawal. And an industry statement yesterday talked about a “multiyear plan” to study the safety of the drugs in kids between 2 and 12 — suggesting no industry action is imminent.

Jenkins said the agency is wary of banning the drugs because parents would simply give their kids adult cold medicines. “It really is a conundrum for us,” Jenkins added.

Jenkins and the FDA should reconsider:

First, studies that established ingredient safety were done almost entirely on adults. Dosing recommendations for kids are simply reduced adult doses, which modern science has clearly shown is faulty science. Children don’t metabolize substances the same as adults — especially toxic drugs.

Second of all, and contrary to Jenkins’ opinion, parents of small children can be educated — especially if they get the warnings from doctors, pharmacists, point-of-purchase materials, packaging inserts, and big, bold warnings on new labels that “This medicine can be fatal to children under 6 years of age”.

It sounds to me like the FDA doesn’t want to ask Big Pharma to lose another nickel on sales aimed at children, or spend another nickel adding warnings and producing educational materials, ads and commercials that would help parents make the right decisions.

It’s the same old story: Keep American consumers stupid and drugged, no matter the cost is in deaths and injuries. Short-term profits out-point long-term problems like massive class-action suits and legal settlements.

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August 11, 2008

Merck And Schering-Plough Get Beefier RICO Threats

Filed under: Big Pharma, Uncategorized, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 8:50 am

A federal judge recently said Lilly could be ‘barely’ liable under RICO for off-label marketing practices, and now Merck Schering-Plough is accused of “indictable” RICO offences in a civil suit filed by a New York county government.

The Shearlings Got Ploughed blog reports that the local Suffolk County, NY, government has filed a civil suit in New Jersey federal court against Schering-Plough and its joint venture with Merck, among others, that “takes important new strides in alleging RICO pattern activity — calling Schering’s and Merck’s conduct here ‘indictable’.”

Although there have been other RICO putative class action cases against Schering-Plough and Merck over its cholesterol drugs Zetia and Vytorin, the new Suffolk County complaint is significant because it “represents a new level of gravitas in the ENHANCE litigation maelstrom now besieging Schering-Plough and its executive leadership,” the blog says.

It’s more serious, the blog suggests, because “a local-governmental agency is now effectively swearing that Schering has committed RICO-indictable pattern racketeering by concealing the results of ENHANCE research for almost two years — while the good people of Suffolk County, New York were forced to pay greatly-inflated prices for a drug that was no more effective than those much cheaper statins.”

Click here to see a marked-up copy of the relevant page in the complaint.

The suit alleges consumer protection, false advertising, securities and other violations in connection with the ENHANCE study delays and non-disclosures, various statements by the company and executives, that relate to the drugs’ effectiveness.

With similar charges being suggested against Lilly over Zyprexa, and all the other legal problems Big Pharma continues to face, it’s obviously time for pharmaceutical execs to get out of the huddle with PR flacks and sit themselves down in front of a mirror. Crafting evasive media statements for investors, doctors, patients, employees, and all the rest is not cutting it.

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The Emperor Isn’t Wearing Any Clothes

Filed under: Big Pharma, Uncategorized, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug abuse, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 5:58 am

The abandonment of psychotherapy by thousands of psychiatrists in favor of prescription drugs tells us that psychiatric ‘talk therapy’ never worked. And since drugs don’t provide any answers either, and in fact carry enormous risks, what has psychiatry ever really done for anybody?

An article in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry reports that the use of anti-depressants is replacing psychotherapy for a significant number of psychiatrists. Thousands of them, the article says, are dropping ‘talk therapy’ in favor of the quick prescription, and it’s an expanding trend.

Financial incentives, the author suggests, have brought about the switch from talk therapy to drugs, motivated by reductions in insurance payments for psychotherapy, increases in the number of ‘managed care’ patients (HMOs and PPOs), and rapid growth in ‘psychopharmacology’.

Study author Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore said insurance company reimbursements for a 45-minute psychotherapy visit are now less than an equivalent amount of time consumed by three 15-minute ‘medication visits’ — patient pit stops for a quick prescription.

And don’t forget the thousands of patients who seldom, or never, see their doctor again after the first visit, depending instead on phone-in prescription renewals.

Meanwhile, the number of psychiatrists studying psychotherapy as a specialty is also dropping, the article says, with a corresponding increase in pharmacotherapy specialists. This portends that even more legal drug-pushers will soon be hanging out their shingles.

These developments clearly say what most of us have always known or suspected:

Psychotherapy, and basically, let’s admit it, that means psychiatry itself, is no more than a failed experiment.

Many cogent arguments also exist, beyond the scope of this blog, that detail how psychiatry, in general, has done more harm than good, and continues to do so at an accelerating rate through its complete devotion to drugs. The gallop, nay the stampede, to push drugs on a troubled population instead of helping it find the answers it needs is among the most telling of those arguments.

We already know — come on, everyone knows — that psych drugs, or any drugs, provide absolutely zero answers to the meaning of life and one’s place in the scheme of things. And these are answers that almost anyone with a functioning mind needs and wants.

Plus, psychoactive drugs bring with them the constant risk of dependency, and a list of side effects as long as your arm — everything from feeling plain lousy to taking an arsenal to school and murdering a dozen or two classmates.

If psychotherapy had ever actually worked, psychiatrists’ medical ethics would have led to demands for adequate compensation from insurers. It’s called the Hippocratic Oath. There was no effective demand, and that speaks volumes about psychotherapy.

And psychiatry hasn’t just abandoned psychotherapy, it has abandoned its very raison d’etre — to help mankind achieve a higher level of existence by actually explaining life and solving his problems. That never happened either, which says everything.

I think psychiatry acknowledged its failure a long time ago, when it found, or was found by, Big Pharma. Either way, it was a match made in, well, somewhere. And for both of them it’s been the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and a leap from the frying pan into the fire for anyone else who buys into the psych drug lie.

With Big Pharma as its supplier, psychiatry has become the biggest drug cartel in history. Under its malevolent care, and with the approval and encouragement of educational, health care and governmental institutions, everyone from the cradle to the grave is persuaded to bury their questions about life in an impenetrable pharmaceutical fog, forever.

That is not a higher level of existence by anyone’s reckoning.

Most appalling has been how psychiatry has gathered unto itself an almost unlimited god-like power and clout. With few if any successes, and many would argue no statistics at all to back up its claimed omniscience, it’s clear that psychiatry’s power is utterly unwarranted.

As the child in the old fable said, ‘Look, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!’

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