Bayer Sells AIDS-Infected Drug Banned in U.S. in Europe, Asia - Unearthed documents show that the drug company Bayer sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting medicine -- Factor VIII concentrate, intended for hemophiliacs -- to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, although they knew that it was tainted with AIDS. Bayer knew about the fact that the drug was tainted and told the FDA to keep things under wraps while they made a profit off of a drug that infected its patients. If these allegations are true, then both Bayer and the FDA are at fault for this catastrophe. FDA regulators helped to keep the continued sales hidden, asking the company that the problem be ''quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public,'' according to the minutes of a 1985 meeting.
Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Pharma. Show all posts
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Thursday, June 12, 2008
US Troops are Increasingly Medicated
Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say. […]
Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. While the Army cites failed relationships as the primary cause, some outside experts sense a link between suicides and prescription-drug use — though there is also no way of knowing how many suicide attempts the antidepressants may have prevented by improving a soldier’s spirits.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Former Shill for Big Pharma Tells the Truth about Drug Testing
Erick Turner, a psychiatry professor at the Oregon State Health and Sciences University, woke up one day and realized that he was acting as a shill for pharmaceutical corporations. Worse, he was promoting drugs that not only provide very little benefit, but also do great harm. In spite of the benefits paid to him, including accommodations and thousands of dollars, and the ego satisfaction of being recognized as a "Very Important Person" by his fellow physicians, his conscience wouldn't let him continue.
So, Dr. Turner turned on his pharmaceutical masters. He spoke out against the products he'd been promoting. In the January 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, he published an article telling the truth about one class of drugs, SSRI antidepressants, such as Prozac and Paxil. In interviews, he has spoken even more broadly, stating that the lack of efficacy of SSRIs is the "dirty little secret" of the psychiatric world.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Judicial Watch Uncovers 3 Deaths Relating to HPV Vaccine
(Washington, DC) -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine. One physician’s assistant reported that a female patient “died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine.” Two other reports, on girls 12 and 19, reported deaths relating to heart problems and/or blood clotting.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Study doubts effectiveness of antidepressant drugs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said.
Researchers led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull reviewed a series of studies, both published and unpublished, on four antidepressants, examining the question of whether a person's response to these drugs hinged on how depressed they were before getting treatment.
They were Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, also known as fluoxetine, Wyeth's Effexor, also called venlafaxine; GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil, also called Seroxat or paroxetine, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's drug Serzone, also called nefazodone, which it no longer markets in the United States.
Monday, February 18, 2008
22,000 Died Amid Delayed Bayer Drug Recall
(Source-Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The lives of 22,000 patients could have been saved if U.S. regulators had been quicker to remove a Bayer AG drug used to stem bleeding during open heart surgery, according to a medical researcher interviewed by CBS Television's 60 Minutes program.
The drug Trasylol was withdrawn in November at the request of the FDA after an observational study linked the medicine to kidney failure requiring dialysis and increased death of those patients.
It had been given to as many as a third of all heart bypass patients in the United States at the height of its use over a period of many years, according to the report.
He said in the broadcast that Bayer failed to disclose to the FDA during an FDA advisory panel meeting in September 2006 -- at which Mangano's negative findings were discussed -- that the German drugmaker had conducted its own research which confirmed the same dangers established by his study.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The lives of 22,000 patients could have been saved if U.S. regulators had been quicker to remove a Bayer AG drug used to stem bleeding during open heart surgery, according to a medical researcher interviewed by CBS Television's 60 Minutes program.
The drug Trasylol was withdrawn in November at the request of the FDA after an observational study linked the medicine to kidney failure requiring dialysis and increased death of those patients.
It had been given to as many as a third of all heart bypass patients in the United States at the height of its use over a period of many years, according to the report.
He said in the broadcast that Bayer failed to disclose to the FDA during an FDA advisory panel meeting in September 2006 -- at which Mangano's negative findings were discussed -- that the German drugmaker had conducted its own research which confirmed the same dangers established by his study.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Vaccine Companies Investigated for Manslaughter
(Source)
PARIS, Jan 31 (Reuters) - French authorities have opened a formal investigation into two managers from drugs groups GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sanofi Pasteur over a vaccination campaign in the 1990s, a judicial source said late on Thursday.
The investigations follow allegations that the companies failed to fully disclose side effects from an anti-hepatitis B drug used in a vaccination campaign between 1994 and 1998.
PARIS, Jan 31 (Reuters) - French authorities have opened a formal investigation into two managers from drugs groups GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sanofi Pasteur over a vaccination campaign in the 1990s, a judicial source said late on Thursday.
The investigations follow allegations that the companies failed to fully disclose side effects from an anti-hepatitis B drug used in a vaccination campaign between 1994 and 1998.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
How Teenage Rebellion has Become a Mental Illness
(Original-Alternet)
Big pharma has some new customers. Not complying with authority is now, in many cases, labeled a disease.
Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.
Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.
Big pharma has some new customers. Not complying with authority is now, in many cases, labeled a disease.
Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.
Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Hawaii Moves to Ban Aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, etc.)
(Original-rense.com)
Efforts continue to ban this deadly excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug that is addicting the public and triggering so many symptoms and diseases from MS and lupus and seizures to Parkinson's, diabetes and obesity and even blindness and death. An aspartame documentary, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, explains how Don Rumsfeld got this marketed when the FDA said no. http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/rumsfeld2.html Masquerading as an additive it's a deadly drug that interacts with other drugs and vaccines.
Efforts continue to ban this deadly excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug that is addicting the public and triggering so many symptoms and diseases from MS and lupus and seizures to Parkinson's, diabetes and obesity and even blindness and death. An aspartame documentary, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, explains how Don Rumsfeld got this marketed when the FDA said no. http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/rumsfeld2.html Masquerading as an additive it's a deadly drug that interacts with other drugs and vaccines.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Big Pharma:Drug Troops to numb them to horrors of war
(Alternet)
In June, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health acknowledged "daunting and growing" psychological problems among our troops: Nearly 40 percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members are presenting with serious mental health issues. They also reported "fundamental weaknesses" in the U.S. military's approach to psychological health. That report was followed in August by the Army Suicide Event Report (ASER), which reported that 2006 saw the highest rate of military suicides in 26 years. And last month, CBS News reported that, based on its own extensive research, over 6,250 American veterans took their own lives in 2005 alone -- that works out to a little more than 17 suicides every day.
In June, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health acknowledged "daunting and growing" psychological problems among our troops: Nearly 40 percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members are presenting with serious mental health issues. They also reported "fundamental weaknesses" in the U.S. military's approach to psychological health. That report was followed in August by the Army Suicide Event Report (ASER), which reported that 2006 saw the highest rate of military suicides in 26 years. And last month, CBS News reported that, based on its own extensive research, over 6,250 American veterans took their own lives in 2005 alone -- that works out to a little more than 17 suicides every day.
Anti-depressant Studies go Unpublished
The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.
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