prescription drug addiction « 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.

Comments Off

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.

Comments Off

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.

Comments Off

June 8, 2009

Should OxyContin Be Banned? The Evidence Says “YES”

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, drug addiction, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 12:39 pm

Since Purdue Pharma began producing and selling it in 1995, OxyContin has been implicated in many times more U.S. deaths than were caused by 9/11 and the Iraq War combined.

OxyContin is molecularly almost identical to, and acts in the body in the same manner as, the illegal street drug heroin.

Heroin — the target of billions of our tax dollars in drug-war funding, as any school kid knows, is the main source of income for Afghanistan’s tens of thousands of rural opium poppy farmers and their Taliban supporters.

So the question must be asked: “If heroin is illegal, why is OxyContin legal?”

In fact, that was the $64 million question asked of FDA officials at a Maryland public hearing recently on the dangers of the OxyContin. Not one of them could — or would — answer the question.

In 1898, heroin was introduced by the Bayer company as a substitute for morphine, which unlike morphine, said Bayer, was not addictive. It was widely promoted as an effective treatment for coughs and colds and even treatment for morphine addicts.

After various Acts and laws affecting it, heroin finally became an illegal drug in the United States in 1924, with passage of The Heroin Act. (The Bayer company, in 1913, had long since stopped manufacturing it.) The Act spawned a thriving black market, which persists to this day in one form or another.

It had taken a while for scientists to discover that heroin metabolizes into morphine in the body, and is devastatingly addictive. But tens of thousands of people had already learned how viciously addictive it is, thousands of them fatally, during the preceding decades. The Heroin Act was too little, too late.

OxyContin, from Purdue Pharma, has had an almost identical history: Made by a prominent drug company, which promotes it as non-addictive compared to other narcotics, but it soon becomes known as an addictive killer. More than a decade passes, while nothing is done, and thousands die.

And ironically, OxyContin becomes the drug of choice among heroin addicts, when their heroin supply is interrupted. In fact, thousands prefer it, because it offers pharmaceutical purity and predictability. And although it’s available at any pharmacy for someone with a gun or a knife, it’s also available in vast quantities on the street for a decent price — just high enough to ensure drug crime becomes a way of life for addicts.

In 2007, as we all know, Purdue and three top execs pled guilty in to misleading the public about the addictive nature of OxyContin. The company paid fines totaling over $634 million, including the individuals, who were also assigned hundreds of hours of community service.

But no Purdue exec went to jail, the U.S. Attorney allowed a Purdue affiliate to take the fall and be barred from doing business with the federal government, the FDA has allowed OxyContin to remain on the market, and thousands continue to fall victim to OxyContin addiction and abuse, injury, and early death.

Anyone with a shred of good sense and compassion should pop over to the Ban OxyContin petition website and sign the petition, and while there, browse the tales of tragedy associated with the drug shared by hundreds of visiting petitioners.

OxyContin is a viral epidemic that has infected every community in America. There are plenty of other drugs that work just as well than OxyContin, essentially just legal heroin, at controlling chronic pain, that do not cause widespread addiction and death.

Ideally, the FDA should remove OxyContin from the marketplace entirely. At the very least, OxyContin should be reclassified and prescribed only for chronic end-of-life pain.

Comments Off

June 1, 2009

OxyContin And Big Pharma’s Prescription Drug Bonanza

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 11:37 am

Between 1980 and 2003, Americans doubled their spending on new autos, tripled what they paid for clothing, but increased their spending on prescription drugs nearly 17-fold, thanks to the $billions Big Pharma spends on marketing. And with drugs like OxyContin in the mix, the entire world has fallen victim to the greatest epidemic in history.

There is a grass-roots movement afoot to restrict the use of the narcotic painkiller OxyContin to, at most, end-stage cancer patients and similar cases — or to ban it outright.

An online-petition to ban OxyContin is gathering thousands of signatures, and will be presented to the FDA and other relevant government agencies soon. We encourage all readers to hasten over and sign the petition now.

So why ban a painkiller that purportedly helps people get along?

It’s no longer a secret that prescription drugs can harm you. In the relentless search for the next billion-dollar blockbuster, Big Pharma’s aggressive marketing of unsafe drugs has become a painful thorn in the side for thousands of Americans.

Thousands of innocent people have been killed or maimed by drugs like OxyContin — drugs which were not just unsafe, but were heavily marketed by drug-makers who knew about its dangers and lied about it.

Big Pharma’s unethical, greed-driven marketing practices are creating an enormous backlash, a subculture of anti-pharma activists who have lost loved ones to the deadly side-effects of prescription drugs, or who have been injured themselves. We’re not talking about prescription drugs illicitly obtained and consumed recreationally — the majority of victims received legal prescriptions from family doctors.

One of the most publicized drugs in this category, OxyContin from drug-maker Purdue Pharma, ranks among the highest on prescription drug activists’ outrage list. Essentially legal heroin, OxyContin has caused or been involved in the deaths of thousands, and the devastation of addiction and ruined lives for many tens of thousands more.

It’s old news that Purdue was fined $600 million a couple of years ago for its lies about the dangers of OxyContin. And senior executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges, were personally fined more than $34 million, and were assigned to hundreds of hours of community service in drug rehab centers. Numerous other drug companies have also been charged with misleading the medical profession, regulators and the public about the dangers of their drugs. Lawsuits number in the many thousands.

As the horrific catalog of Big Pharma’s marketing lies and unethical excesses continues to be revealed in courtrooms across the land, citizens are calling for an end to the practice of promoting and distributing unproven, unsafe drugs — essentially turning the public into experimental guinea pigs.

And they want more punitive results from the legal system, which has thus far treated pharmaceutical companies and their complicit executives to slaps on the wrist, rather than the jail terms normally accorded drug dealers and admitted felons.

A heartless street dealer may be complicit in the harm of a few, but Big Pharma’s list of victims is in the hundreds of thousands. In any other situation, such statistics are considered genocide. In this light, corporate drug dealers deserve far more severe punishment than street dealers.

Comments Off

April 14, 2009

Supreme Court Revives Antidepressant Suicide Cases Against Pfizer, GSK

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceutical sales, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 9:39 am

Justices ask 3rd circuit appeals court to reconsider a number of suits in light of the recent Wyeth vs. Levine ruling.

When Congress set up the federal drug-approval system decades ago, it clearly intended traditional state tort liability suits to act as an additional layer of protection for consumers beyond that provided by the Food and Drug Administration.

But this essential component of public safety became the center of what has come to be known as ‘the pre-emption wars’, with the Bush administration championing the concept that federal regulations trump state tort, effectively nullifying consumer product liability lawsuits aimed at Big Pharma.

Nearly a year ago, Big Pharma scored a major victory when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 majority decision that the makers of Paxil and Zoloft could not be sued for failing to warn of a risk of suicide, because the Food and Drug Administration had explicitly refused to order such warnings. The court found that such lawsuits must be pre-empted because they directly conflict with action already taken by the FDA.

A couple of weeks ago, however, the U.S. Supreme Court fired a devastating broadside in the pre-emption wars, effectively sinking the pre-emption ship for the foreseeable future by ruling in favor of Diana Levine in Wyeth vs. Levine. And this week the Supremes instructed the appeals court to reconsider the stalled antidepressant lawsuits. Wyeth vs. Levine reaffirms patients’ right to sue drugmakers for product liability, they said.

According to Bloomberg News, the antidepressant suits were brought by relatives of a woman who killed herself after taking GSK’s Paxil, and a man who committed suicide after taking Pfizer’s Zoloft. Both suits fault the drug makers for failing to warn that their antidepressants might cause suicidal tendencies in adults.

The relatives argued that the companies could have included a warning on the packaging insert, even though the FDA had expressed skepticism about the link with suicide. They said the FDA has never stopped companies from issuing warnings about suicide risks.

After more than two decades of claiming there was no scientific basis for suicide warnings, the FDA did an about-face in 2005 and requested suicide warnings for antidepressants for children under 18, and then in 2006 and 2007 began to urge the same warnings for patients aged 18 to 24, calling for careful monitoring of patients of all ages.

I don’t know how many children and young adults had to die before the FDA finally urged that suicide warnings be added to antidepressant labels for their age groups. But now that Big Pharma cannot hide behind federal pre-emption, antidepressant-linked adult suicide will receive its proper day in court. Let’s hope it leads positively to fewer deaths in the future.

Comments (0)

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.

Comments (0)

February 23, 2009

FOX News Tampa Urges Florida Prescription Monitoring Program

Filed under: Novus Medical Detox, drug addiction, medical drug detox, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 7:29 am

“Novus Medical Detox clinical director Steve Hayes discusses prescription drug addiction with Tampa Bay’s Fox News 13 medical reporter Dr. Joette Giovinvo.”Addictions and deaths from controlled prescription drugs are soaring, and Florida legislators are being pressed to sit up and pay attention.

Since 2002, nearly 40 states have taken advantage of an annual federal grant program to assist the establishment of, or enhance existing, state-level prescription drug monitoring programs, and most remaining states are planning such programs.

A few, notably Florida, have repeatedly failed to pass legislation establishing prescription drug monitoring. Legislators cite privacy concerns, saying their constituents are worried that their private patient information could somehow be compromised. Others worry a drug monitoring registry might keep meds from patients who need them. Yet to date, there’s been no credible evidence for such concerns.

Prescription drug monitoring programs track doctors’ prescriptions by licensed pharmacists, recording the identity of patients, drugs, physicians, dates and a few other details. Information is accessible only to pharmacists, doctors, and some regulatory agencies. It is designed to be shared by participating states and the feds. The program has already proven helpful in reducing “doctor shopping”, one of the most significant factors enabling prescription drug abuse across the country.

Recently, Tampa Bay’s FOX 13 News carried an item describing the situation in Florida, where narcotic painkillers are killing record numbers of citizens every year. Deaths from drugs like oxycodone and fentanyl have more than tripled in the state since 1998, Fox News said. You can watch the news video here.

The station’s Dr. Joette Giovinco, popularly called “Dr. Jo” by viewers, focused on the plight of Brent Brown, a Florida realtor who became dependent on Xanax, prescribed for ‘restless leg syndrome’ and trouble sleeping. As his drug tolerance went up, more drugs from more doctors left him wired on at least four different medications. The years-long nightmare finally ended after a brief stay at Novus Medical Detox in Pasco County, Florida, where easing patients through drug or alcohol withdrawal is accomplished using state-of-the-art medical protocols.

Dr. Jo visited Novus, where clinical director Steve Hayes confirmed the rising death toll across the country from methadone, oxycodone, OxyContin, fentanyl and other prescription narcotics, what he says are basically “legal heroin.”

“A lot of our patients that come in here talk about how easy it is to go out and get these drugs,” Hayes told Dr. Jo, alluding to the widespread practice of doctor-shopping by addicts, and also the fact that far too many doctors are too quick to prescribe narcotics.

Hayes described the benefits of a computerized registry that allows doctors to see if a patient has already received a prescription for narcotics somewhere else, and when.

Although Florida’s legislation has been repeatedly voted down, albeit by narrow margins, a county pilot program is underway and looks promising. There is hope among many lawmakers now that when the bill is reintroduced in May, it will finally receive approval. If so, it could take effect as early as July this year.

Because of his successful recovery at Novus Medical Detox, Brent Brown has been completely drug free for over a year, said Fox News, is back at work, and is helping others become free from prescription drug addiction.

Comments (0)

February 11, 2009

Judge Upholds Decision Barring Purdue Execs From Federal Health Care

Filed under: Big Pharma, FDA, OxyContin addiction, pharmaceutical giants, pharmaceuticals, prescription drug addiction — Rod Malcolm @ 8:53 am

An administrative law judge has upheld a decision barring three former executives of Purdue Frederick, an affiliate of Stamford-based Purdue Pharma LP that makes OxyContin, from federal health programs for 15 years.

Comparing the three chief executives of a pharmaceutical company to the Third Reich’s Adolph Hitler, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler may seem a stretch to some people, but to those harmed by a prescription drug, and to the loved ones of those killed by that drug because the drug’s hazards were criminally misrepresented, the comparison isn’t that far off.

In 2007, Purdue Pharma and Michael Friedman, its then-chief executive officer, Dr. Paul Goldenheim, then-chief scientific officer, and Howard Udell, then-general counsel, pleaded guilty to misleading doctors and patients from 1996 to 2001 as to OxyContin’s addictiveness by promoting it as a low-risk painkiller.

As is now well known, the three executives were charged with one count of misdemeanor misbranding of OxyContin, served no prison time, and paid a total fine of $34.5 million. Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to felony misbranding of OxyContin and was ordered to pay $600 million in criminal and civil penalties and forfeitures, including $100.6 million to the U.S. government and $59.3 million to repay state health programs and Medicaid.

Last week, reports the Stamford Advocate, Judge Carolyn Cozad Hughes found that Friedman, Goldenheim and Udell had the responsibility and authority to “prevent or correct” Purdue Pharma’s misbranding but “failed to do so,” according to the Office of the Inspector General. The judge then upheld an earlier court decision barring the three executives from participating in federal health programs for 15 years, following an action brought by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now the top three execs are barred for 15 years from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs. Purdue Pharma says it will appeal the decision. But we’d bet that the three multimillionaires are comfortably wrapped in sumptuous private health care plans, and that Medicare and Medicaid are the last things they personally need. In fact, we’ve wondered how everyone involved escaped jail time.

A missing figure in the case might have included a marketing executive or two, or whoever it was that personally, hands-on, directed the felonious “promoting” of OxyContin. This would have let us add Paul Josef Goebells, the Third Reich’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, to our imagined list of OxyContin mass murderers.

Nazi war criminals were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions and the misery of hundreds of millions. With OxyContin, it’s simply a matter of scale. When it comes to a death in the family, the scale is “one”. Marianne Skokel, of Baltimore, lost her 29-year-old daughter, Jill, in 2002 to an OxyContin overdose. She tells The Advocate that she doubts the Office of the Inspector General’s actions will change the former executives or the company.

“I don’t think they know how to conduct business honestly,” she said. “They’re felons.”

Comments (0)

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

Comments (0)

Older Posts »