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OxyContin A Major Factor In World’s Deadliest Pandemic

Rod Malcolm — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:52:21 +0000

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.

Potential Acetaminophen Ban Does Nothing To Reduce Opiate Abuse

Rod Malcolm — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:07:07 +0000

If the FDA follows a committee recommendation to ban acetaminophen-opioid combination painkillers, newer alternatives offer no relief from the ongoing carnage caused by opiate painkiller abuse and addiction.

An FDA advisory committee has recommended banning widely used prescription pain drugs containing acetaminophen, such as Abbott’s Vicodin and Endo’s Percocet, as well as reducing dosing levels of acetaminophen in over-the-counter products such as Tylenol and Excedrin, because of acetaminophen’s potential to cause liver damage.

Most industry watchers doubt the FDA will actually ban prescription drugs containing acetaminophen from the market as recommended, opting instead to lower the recommended dosages. And the committee voted to keep OTC acetaminophen remedies on the shelves, with reduced dosages.

According to an ABC News report, about 42,000 people visit emergency departments each year with acetaminophen overdoses, half of which are accidental. There’s no information given about the other half. What did they do, overdose on purpose? One can only wonder.

The report also quotes Dr. William Lee, chair of the liver diseases department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, who says that acetaminophen deaths outnumber deaths attributed to all other prescription drugs combined.

I don’t know where those figures are coming from. Studies I’m looking at now show 450 or so acetaminophen deaths a year, and more than 5,000 involving opiates and opioid analgesics.

Also, the doctor fails to mention that 60% of deaths involving acetaminophen occur when taking prescription opiate medications that contain acetaminophen — Vicodin (hydrocodone), Percocet (oxycodone) and Tylenol 3 (codeine) and others. These figures explain why the FDA committee is targeting prescription opiate-acetaminophen combinations more strongly than OTC drugs containing only acetaminophen.

And we’re still waiting for the FDA to do something about the opiates and opioids themselves. When you compare thousands of opiate deaths and tens of thousands of dependencies, addictions and ruined lives, to the 450 deaths from acetaminophen, it’s clear the FDA needs to step up and take the opioid painkiller situation more seriously.

There’s little doubt that the recommendations will lead to a shift away from acetaminophen-containing prescription painkillers, and toward alternatives. But banning acetaminophen does nothing for what really counts: Opioid abuse, dependence, addiction and countless ruined lives.

And what about the enormous cost to society of drug related crime? When was the last time you heard about a desperate gun-toting addict robbing a pharmacy for acetaminophen? Almost all pharmacy robberies, street killings and overflowing prisons are the domain of opioid abuse, not acetaminophen.

Yes, acetaminophen-free alternatives are waiting in the wings, like Acurox, a new formulation oxycodone painkiller co-developed by King and Acura that will hopefully deter abuse. It’s currently under review by the FDA. But Acurox, and others like it being developed, are just more oxycodone or hydrocodone in new packages.

Hopefully deter abuse? That’s what they said about OxyContin, now the world’s leading heroin substitute, legal heroin in a pill that’s fast become the favorite of heroin addicts.

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

Rod Malcolm — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:06:10 +0000

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.

Unsealed Documents Reveal More Unethical Marketing By Lilly

Rod Malcolm — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:46:55 +0000

No matter how many lawsuits against Big Pharma we’ve seen in recent years, there doesn’t seem to be any end to them in sight. Ely Lilly, the biggest maker and pusher of psychiatric drugs, is currently under the gun from health insurers alleging massive overpayments due to the company’s illegal marketing practices.

Over the past month or two, Bloomberg News has been pretty much scooping everyone else on the grisly details surrounding the gigantic overpayment lawsuit filed by health insurers against Ely Lilly, for its unethical marketing practices of its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.

The insurers contend that Lilly should pay as much as $6.8 billion in damages for downplaying Zyprexa’s health risks, and for illegally marketing it off-label to increase profits.

So far, about 10,000 pages of internal Lilly documents have been unsealed as part of the suit, and Bloomberg’s reporters have been sifting through them in great detail.

Bloomberg has found documents fully supporting the charge that Lilly brazenly and illegally marketed its antipsychotic Zyprexa off-label for dementia, knowing full well that the drug did nothing to help the condition, and in fact was actually killing elderly patients.

Lilly has already settled with the feds and more than 30 states, pleading guilty to a criminal misdemeanor in January, over the off-label marketing of Zyprexa for use in the elderly. But these new documents remove any vestige of doubt that the company was culpable.

The documents also reveal that a subsidiary of CVS Caremark Corp., the largest U.S. drug-store chain, used its extensive access to health care providers to market Zyprexa directly to mental health prescribers — and was paid for that by Lilly — all while simultaneously under contract to bargain with Lilly on behalf of health insurers.

That’s really got the health insurers up in arms.

In an April 30 filing, Lilly said it had settled suits involving about 32,670 individual claimants alleging damages from Zyprexa, including serious weight gain and diabetes. Some 140 claims are still unsettled, but Lilly has already paid out about $1.2 billion for the individual settlements.

Whether all the suits in recent years brought against Big Pharma by patients alleging damage, by irate insurers alleging overpayment, or by state and federal governments alleging both overpayment and various civil and criminal misconducts, the suits reveal that almost all the time the charges were well-founded.

And now, along with Big Pharma, we can no longer trust our corner drug stores. Our friendly pharmacist is now involved, however indirectly, in the endless litany of crimes against humanity that have permanently sullied Big Pharma’s reputation.

There are two things we must keep in mind if we are ever going to see real changes.

First, Big Pharma’s callous disregard for patient welfare, placing profit ahead of all else, is endemic in the industry. This fact should be trumpeted long and loud.

Second, people were killed outright by Zyprexa. The same is true for many other drugs from numerous drugmakers. Yet Lilly pleaded guilty to a “criminal misdemeanor”, and no drugmaker has spent a single day in prison for murder or manslaughter.

The problem is this: If a drug company is found guilty of a felony, the law states that they can’t do business with the federal government — so the enormous Medicare and Medicaid market is lost, meaning they are essentially out of business. However, if all Big Pharma has to do is pay a fine when they’re caught, like Purdue Pharma was over the OxyContin debacle, then it becomes just a “cost of doing business.”

But slaps on the wrist will never bring about the reform in Big Pharma that is so urgently needed. For a serious discussion of the thorny situation surrounding Big Pharma crimes, and specifically OxyContin and the FDA, please read Different Justice For A Drug Dealer, by Novus Detox director Steven Hayes.

FDA Soft-pedals Study Linking Child Deaths To ADHD Meds

Rod Malcolm — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:00:23 +0000

Kids haven’t been beaten down into ant-like goody-goody social behavior. They aren’t adults, shouldn’t be expected to behave like adults, and don’t deserve to risk death because of the irrational expectations of lazy parents and educators.

The FDA issued a “safety communication” this week admitting there “may be an association” between the use of ADHD amphetamine meds, like Adderall, Concerta, Vyvanse and Ritalin, and sudden death in healthy children.

The agency’s statement follows publication in the American Journal of Psychiatry the findings of a study funded by the FDA and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) that compared sudden death among 564 previously healthy kids on the meds, and 564 kids, also on the ADHD meds, dying in car accidents.

Results: Drug-only unexpected deaths, 10; car accident deaths, 2.

In spite of frequent case reports raising concerns since the early 1990s that stimulants increase the risk for sudden unexplained childhood death, the FDA minimizes the study, and says more comprehensive studies are forthcoming.

Said the FDA: “Given the limitations of this study’s methodology, the FDA is unable to conclude that these data affect the overall risk and benefit profile of stimulant medications used to treat ADHD in children. FDA believes that this study should not serve as a basis for parents to stop a child’s stimulant medication.”

In spite of their findings associating the meds with sudden childhood death, the study’s authors also downplayed the risk, using mushy statements such as: “Stimulants are not innocuous….However, it is equally clear that…it is not possible to quantify the risk beyond estimating that it is very small.”

Let’s say it again: The risk of sudden unexplained death of children is “very small”, and shouldn’t serve as a basis to stop a child’s stimulant medication.

Sorry, but the risk of sudden death is never too small to ignore, especially in kids who are given no choice in the decision. And the risk is off the charts considering many studies, both here and abroad, that have debunked ADHD as a valid condition, and one only treatable with powerful and dangerous drugs.

For example, the Netherlands has already denied the validity of America’s ADHD diagnoses, and other countries including the UK are at least in partial disagreement. ADHD is primarily an American social-cultural phenomenon, jumped on years ago by the profiteering, drug-pushing Big Pharma-psychiatric consortium, much to the detriment of American children, families and American society in general.

Of course, the authors of the current study, being American psychiatrists, are fully sold on the validity of ADHD, and ipso facto, the validity of treating kids with dangerous amphetamines. They blandly estimate that 2.5 million kids are now on ADHD meds in America — a low-ball figure according to some estimates.

And they quote that figure as some sort of proof of validity for ADHD and the drugging of an entire generation of children, rather than for what it really is — a horrifying statistic showing how far the psychs and Big Pharma are taking the hellacious idea to drug America’s population from the cradle to the grave.

Adding to the ADHD $billions rolling into Big Pharma’s coffers are the tens of thousands of adults now being encouraged to leap onto the “I’ve-got-ADHD-too-please-pass-the-amphetamines” bandwagon. Which, by the way, only further legitimizes the drug-our-kids movement.

It’s pathetic, really. I wouldn’t put any child on amphetamines for any reason short of an emergency life-saving treatment, if any condition might require it.

The millions of American parents whose kids already have been targeted by school officials, nurses and physicians for an ADHD prescription should insist on the full battery of heart and blood tests before agreeing to it.

Wait, no, they should just disagree to it, period. Instead, they should research the validity of ADHD itself, without listening to the psychs, Big Pharma, and their official spokespeople on this subject, the FDA.

Kids are kids — people who haven’t been beaten down yet into ant-like goody-goody social behavior. They aren’t adults, and shouldn’t be expected to behave like adults. And they don’t deserve to be forced to risk death from dangerous drugs for any kind of behavior.

Movement To Ban OxyContin Gathering Momentum

Rod Malcolm — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:19:12 +0000

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.

Should OxyContin Be Banned? The Evidence Says “YES”

Rod Malcolm — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:39:13 +0000

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.

New FDA Transparency Task Force Could Save Lives

Rod Malcolm — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:41:31 +0000

If they do it right, and put human life ahead of Wall Street, greater transparency can only lead to greater assurance of public health — the essence of the agency’s mandate.

The FDA has formed a “Transparency Task Force” to recommend ways to improve public transparency concerning agency decisions, according to an FDA news release.

To support the transparency efforts, a June 24, 2009, public meeting has been scheduled to ask the public for recommendations on how the agency can make its activities and decisions “more available, useful and understandable”. A second meeting in the fall of this year is also planned.

“Our administration is committed to making government open and transparent,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the release. “The Transparency Task Force will give the American people a seat at the table and make the FDA more open and accountable.”

The task force will investigate ways to make information more readily available to the public “in a manner compatible with the agency’s goal of protecting confidential information, as appropriate,” the FDA release said.

The announcement follows the new White House Open Government Initiative recently announced by President Obama.

Of course, The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Big Pharma’s lobby group, insists that transparency could have a negative impact on public health.

Oh please. I think they’re referring to their bottom line, not public health.

Corporate secrets have always been the FDA’s stumbling block to transparency. The concept has been carried to extremes — too often to the serious detriment of public health.

In its coverage of the FDA announcement, the New York Times cites a widely prescribed heartburn drug found to be especially toxic to babies, a diabetes medicine and a painkiller that increased heart attack risks, and numerous antidepressants that increased suicidal thoughts — and behavior — in children and teenagers. And this is far from a complete list. There are dozens and dozens of instances where patient health has been put at grave risk because the public was not informed in a timely manner, or was ill-informed, about the dangers of drugs or devices.

Transparency will only improve patient care and public health. Researchers, medical journal publishers, and physicians, have said for years that greater transparency would save lives.

Quoting from a study published in 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Times reports that five different companies in the 1990s were all testing similar blood substitute products, and each was found later to increase the risk of death.

“Had the findings been made public, the authors argued, some of the companies might have known sooner that their products were dangerous, sparing the lives of some patients in the studies,” the Times said.

FDA transparency: What a concept! It’s been a long time coming.

Yes, it’s a complex problem to protect real trade secrets while keeping the public properly informed. But the solution can be simplified. The new task force must consider one salient fact above all others: Pharmaceutical stock values cannot compare, ever, with the value of a single human life.

OxyContin And Big Pharma’s Prescription Drug Bonanza

Rod Malcolm — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:37:59 +0000

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.

Massachusetts Biotech Chief Fined $10,000 Over Ethics Breaches

Rod Malcolm — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:04:56 +0000

Former state economic development aide used position to develop tax breaks and other incentives for biotech companies, while secretly seeking top job with the biotech trade council.

The Massachusetts Ethics Commission has levied a $10,000 fine on Robert K. Coughlin, the former top economic development aide to Governor Deval Patrick, for secretly seeking the presidency of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council last year — and all while using his government job to help push through various tax breaks and incentives crucial to the biotech industry’s lobbying group.

The Boston Globe reports that the ethics commission found that Coughlin, a former Democratic state representative, began his own lobbying activities to land the $350,000-a-year job with the biotech lobbying group only a few weeks after the governor hired him to be undersecretary of business development. Coughlin spent the next five months secretly pursuing the job without telling administration officials, and without removing himself from policy decisions affecting his future employer, which is required by state law.

In finding that Coughlin violated state ethics law, the commission said his actions created an appearance that the Mass Biotechnology Council could unduly enjoy his favor in the performance of his official duties.

Created an appearance? Oh please! It’s was a lot more than “an appearance”.

And other than the fine, the commission has taken no action against Coughlin, and tried to keep its findings secret.

As for the ethics of the biotech council members themselves, it’s interesting to note that Coughlin’s predecessor in the top job at the biotech council, Thomas F. Finneran, was forced to resign after pleading guilty to federal obstruction charges almost two years ago. And the disgraced Finneran, before he took the biotech council job, was formerly the state House speaker!

Meanwhile, undaunted, the 550-member biotech council, which includes many large corporations, is said to be delighted with their new president, and looking forward to his inspired leadership in the coming year.

Whew.

The whole affair emphasizes the abysmal level of ethics of the pharmaceutical industry in general, and reminds us yet again of how its pervasive $eduction of politicians reaches into all levels of government.

Like the old saying goes, “Money talks, bull**** walks.”