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Selling Depression—Adding New Spin and Urgency to Depression Drug Sales

admin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:46:30 +0000

CounterPunch – June 19 Edition

by Martha Rosenberg

The discovery that many people with life problem or occasional bad moods would willingly dose themselves with antidepressants sailed the drug industry through the 2000s. A good chunk of the $4.5 billion a year direct-to-consumer advertising has been devoted to convincing people they don’t have problems with their job, the economy and their family, they have depression. Especially because depression can’t be diagnosed from a blood test.

Unfortunately, three things dried up the depression gravy train for the drug industry. Blockbusters went off patent and generics took off, antidepressants were linked with gory and unpredictable violence, especially in young users and — they didn’t even work, according to medical articles!

That’s when the drug industry began debuting the concept of “treatment resistant depression.” It wasn’t that their drugs didn’t work (or you didn’t have depression in the first place), you had “treatment resistant depression.” Your first expensive and dangerous drug needed to be coupled with more expensive and dangerous drugs because monotherapy, one drug alone, wasn’t doing the trick!

You’ve got to admire the drug industry’s audacity with this upsell strategy. Adding drugs to your treatment resistant depression triples its take, patients don’t know which drug is working so they’ll take all of them and the defective drugs are exonerated! (Because the problem is you.)

Now the drug industry has a new whisper campaign to keep the antidepressant boat afloat. Your depression is “progressive.”

Once upon a time, when depression was neither seasonal, atypical, bipolar or treatment resistant, it was considered to be a self-limiting disease. In fact, just about the only good thing you could say about depression was it wouldn’t last forever.

But now, the drug industry is giving depression the don’t-wait scare treatment like coronary events (statins), asthma attacks (“controller” drugs) and thinning bones (Sally Field). If you don’t hurry and take medication, your depression will get worse!

“Depressive episodes become more easily triggered over time,” floats an article on the physician Web site Medscape (flanked by ads for the antidepressant Pristiq.) “As the number of major depressive episodes increase, the risk for subsequent episodes is predicted more from the number of prior episodes and less from the occurrence of a recent life stress.” The article, unabashedly titled “Neurobiology of Depression: Major Depressive Disorder as a Progressive Illness,” is written by Vladimir Maletic who happens to have served on Eli Lilly’s Speaker’s Bureau, says the disclosure information, and whose co-authors are each employees and/or Lilly shareholders.

On WebMD, a sister site to Medscape, the depression sell is even less subtle. An article called Recognizing the Symptoms of Depression, smothered with five ads for the Eli Lilly antidepressant, Cymbalta, submits, “Most of us know about the emotional symptoms of depression. But you may not know that depression can be associated with many physical symptoms, too.”

Depression may masquerade as headaches, insomnia, fatigue, backache, dizziness, lightheadedness or appetite problems mongers the article. “You might feel queasy or nauseous. You might have diarrhea or become chronically constipated.” And here, you thought it was something you ate!

The danger with these symptoms says the article is that you would fail to diagnose yourself as suffering from a psychiatric problem and buy an over-the-counter drug like a normal person. “Because these symptoms occur with many conditions, many depressed people never get help, because they don’t know that their physical symptoms might be caused by depression. A lot of doctors miss the symptoms, too.”

But when head and backaches aren’t labeled as depression, the drug industry make no money and insurance rates could stop climbing from over-treatment with unnecessary, expensive and dangerous psychoactive drugs!

To prevent such goring of marketshare, the article (whose content was “selected and controlled by WebMD’s editorial staff and is funded by Lilly USA,” an original WebMD financial partner according to the Washington Post) counsels worry about physical symptoms. “Don’t assume they’ll go away on their own.” Symptoms may “need additional treatment” and “some antidepressants, such as Cymbalta and Effexor, may help with chronic pain, too.”

Before direct-to-consumer advertising, the health care system was devoted to preventing over-treatment and assuring patients they were probably okay. Who remembers “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning”? Now patients are assured they probably aren’t okay but probably have a progressive disease. Luckily their disease can be treated with progressive prescriptions from pharma.

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenberg06172011.html

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FDA approved Big Pharma drugs without effectiveness data

admin — Thu, 05 May 2011 18:38:54 +0000

Natural News May 4, 2011

by S. L. Baker

Consumers constantly are told how complicated it is to get a new drug on the market. After all, researchers have to jump through all sorts of hoops to assure safety before new therapies are approved for the public, right?

It turns out they may be missing some of those hoops or not jumping through some of the most important ones.

In fact, huge red flags are being raised about how drugs are tested and approved in two new studies, including one just published in the May 4th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

A case in point: it turns out that only about half of the new prescription medications pushed onto the market over the last decade had the proper data together for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – yet the FDA approved them anyhow.

The information in question is known specifically as comparative effectiveness data. And it is – or should be – a very big deal when it comes to deciding whether a drug should be approved and sold to the public

According to the Institute of Medicine, comparative effectiveness data is defined as the “generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care.”

In other words, how does a new drug stack up against other treatments – is it more beneficial, safer, or does it have more potential dangers?

Comparative effectiveness information on drugs is especially important when doctors are making decisions about whether to prescribe a med, and to whom, soon after a drug is approved. That’s because when Big Pharma medications first hit the market, physicians are relying on what drug companies and the FDA tell them about a medication. It takes a while for real life reports to come in as people report reactions, side effects (including deaths related to a drug) to become clearer.

Also, there are usually not data from large head-to-head trials comparing multiple treatments available when a medication first hits the marketplace. “Comparative effectiveness is taking on an increasingly important role in U.S. health care, yet little is known about the availability of comparative efficacy data for drugs at the time of their approval in the United States,” according to background information in the new JAMA study.

It’s not like there’s not money to come up with this information, either. In 2009, Congress allocated $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money to comparative effectiveness research.

For the JAMA study, researcher Nikolas H. Goldberg and colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, investigated the proportion of recently approved drugs that had comparative efficacy data available at the time they were authorized by the FDA to be sold in the U.S. They also examined the availability of this information over time and by therapeutic indication by checking out approval packages publicly available through the online database of drug products (dubbed new molecular entities, NMEs, for short) approved by FDA between 2000 and 2010.

The researchers found that only about half of 197 eligible approved NMEs between 2000 and 2010 had comparative efficacy data available at the time they were approved to be marketed.

Meanwhile, another recent study throws needed light on the limited data behind the safety and effectiveness of some Big Pharma drugs.

Research led jointly by Alexander Tsai of Harvard University and Nicholas Rosenlicht of the University of California San Francisco just published in PLoS Medicine zeroed in on the medication aripiprazole, which is prescribed treating bipolar disorder .

How was this powerful drug deemed safe and effective? Amazingly, the research team found the only evidence for the use of this medication came from a single trial. And, as they described in their paper, the scientists found key limitations of the drug study that clearly skewed the findings so they appear to support the use of aripiprazole for bipolar disorder.

Did this stop the FDA from approving the drug? No way. And neither did the fact that this single, poorly designed trial was sponsored by the drug manufacturer who produces aripiprazole.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032279_Big_Pharma_fraud.html#ixzz1LVKgPjfN

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Another Psychiatric Drug, Another Potential Criminal Investigation—J&J’s Antipsychotic Risperdal

admin — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:32:14 +0000

Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2010

by Peter Loftus of Dow Jones Newswires

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) said it’s in discussions with the government to resolve a long-running investigation of whether it improperly marketed the antipsychotic Risperdal.

“Discussions are ongoing in an effort to resolve potential criminal and civil litigation arising from these matters,” J&J disclosed in a regulatory filing Wednesday. “Whether a resolution can be reached and on what terms is uncertain.”

J&J spokesman Jeff Leebaw declined further comment.

Risperdal, which is approved to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was once J&J’s best-selling drug, with global sales of about $4.9 billion in 2007, according to IMS Health, before its oral formulation lost patent protection and cleared the way for generic competition.

J&J has previously disclosed government inquiries regarding Risperdal and later, a newer antipsychotic, Invega, but hadn’t previously said it was in talks for a settlement.

In 2004, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a subpoena seeking documents regarding sales and marketing of Risperdal, as well as payments to physicians and clinical trials for the drug, from 1997 to 2002.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia sent an additional subpoena in 2005, seeking information about Risperdal marketing and adverse reactions associated with the drug. Grand jury subpoenas have been issued seeking testimony from various witnesses.

Earlier this year, J&J, of New Brunswick, N.J., disclosed the government had served civil investigative demands seeking additional information about the marketing of Risperdal and Invega.

Other makers of popular antipsychotics have settled government probes of marketing practices in recent years. In April, AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) agreed to pay about $520 million to resolve Justice Department allegations that it promoted Seroquel off label, or for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Last year, Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) agreed to pay more than $1.4 billion and pleaded guilty to a criminal charge, admitting it promoted the antipsychotic Zyprexa for off-label uses including treatment of dementia in the elderly.

The drugs also have been linked to safety risks, including increased risk of death if used by elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis, as well as weight gain.

Several U.S. states have filed lawsuits against J&J seeking reimbursement of Medicaid funds used to pay for off-label uses of Risperdal, as well as compensation for treating beneficiaries for alleged adverse reactions to the drug.

In October, a jury in Louisiana awarded the state $257.7 million after concluding that J&J minimized the drug’s risk of causing weight gain leading to diabetes. J&J said it would appeal the verdict because the jury wasn’t properly told of applicable legal standards, and certain evidence was excluded. J&J said it didn’t violate the law.

Read the rest of the article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101110-717532.html

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Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals—How Female Sexual Dysfunction (a “mental disorder”) was invented by the drug industry

cchrint — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 18:41:38 +0000

The Independent
By Jeremy Laurance
October 1, 2010

Female sexual dysfunction – which is claimed to affect up to two thirds of women – is a disorder invented by the pharmaceutical industry to build global markets for drugs to treat it, it is claimed today.

Drug companies have invested millions in the search for a female equivalent of Viagra, so far without success. But while doing so they have stoked demand by creating a buzz around the disorder they have created, according to Ray Moynihan, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Corporate employees worked with medical opinion leaders, ran surveys aimed at portraying the problem as widespread and helped create the diagnostic instruments to persuade women that their sexual difficulties deserved a medical label. But sex problems in women are far more complex than they are in men, encompassing lack of desire, lack of arousal and lack of orgasm and the drug industry’s narrow focus is failing them.

Mr Moynihan, who first investigated the drug industry’s role in female sexual dysfunction a decade ago, says it illustrates a wider problem about the creation of new diseases, and the widening of existing boundaries for treatment with designations such as pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension and pre-osteoporosis, for which the latest treatments are aggressively promoted.

In his new book, Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals, which is previewed in the British Medical Journal, he says: “Drug marketing is merging with medical science in a fascinating and frightening way. Perhaps it is time to reassess the way in which the medical establishment defines common conditions and recommends how to treat them.”

In 2005, Pfizer, makers of Viagra, funded a survey which showed 63 per cent of women had sexual dysfunction and that testosterone and Viagra might be helpful. In 2006, Procter and Gamble, makers of a testosterone patch for women, sponsored a survey showing one in 10 postmenopausal women had hypoactive [low] sexual desire disorder (the company sold its drug business in 2009). In 2008, Boehringer Ingelheim, makers of flibanserin which is claimed to boost the female libido, sponsored a survey which also showed one in 10 women was in need of help.

Efforts by the companies to meet the need have subsequently foundered. Pfizer pulled Viagra from the market for women after trials showed it had no greater effect than placebo. Procter and Gamble’s testosterone patch was rejected in 2004 in the US, over fears it raised the risk of cancer and heart disease and Beohringer Ingelheim’s drug, flibanserin, was rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration in June on the grounds it had failed to deliver the agreed benefits while carrying the risk of serious side effects.

Mr Moynihan warns that although the drugs have so far failed, more are in the pipeline and claims that “the drug industry shows no signs of abandoning plans to meet the unmet need it has helped to manufacture”. A spokesman for Pfizer said: “We currently have no plans to develop medicines for FSD.”

Read entire article here: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/female-sexual-dysfunction-was-invented-by-drugs-industry-2094578.html

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Making a Market in Antipsychotic Drugs: An Ironic Tragedy

admin — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:52:36 +0000

The Huffington Post

September 23, 2010

by Dr. Peter Breggin

Remember not so long ago when Prozac became the world’s largest selling medication of any kind, and then for years how Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft took over many of the top 10 spots? Remember the explanations at the time–that they were wonder drugs and that 15-50 percent or more of Americans would need them some time in their lives? To many people this seemed like a scientific breakthrough when in reality it was … a triumph of marketing. Some studies suggest that the antidepressants are little or no more effective than a sugar pill and a lot more dangerous. Recent research examined all antidepressant studies submitted in recent years to FDA in regard to antidepressant efficacy and found that the drug performed no better than placebo except in “severely depressed patients,” reaching “clinical significance” only “at the upper end of the very severely depressed category.” Even then, the difference between the antidepressant and the placebo was “relatively small.”

In addition to being largely ineffective, the antidepressants can be very distressing to withdraw from, which keeps the market artificially inflated by people who would desperately like to stop but find the process too emotionally or physically painful. Often these individuals fail to realize that they are undergoing withdrawal and instead mistakenly conclude that they “need” the medication to control their original psychiatric problems.

Now look what have become the new top selling drugs in the world: antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zyprexa, Abilify, Seroquel, Geodon and Invega. Although the FDA has been expanding the approved use of some of these drugs to some cases of autism, Tourettes and a variety of other problems, their original purpose and their main use in psychiatry until now has been largely confined to psychosis and acute mania. Psychosis and acute mania afflict a very small portion of the the population. Yet these drugs are now at the top of the list of most widely prescribed medications worldwide. How did these incredibly toxic chemicals become daily pharmacological mainstays for so many millions of children and adults? It’s time to face the truth that the prescription of psychiatric drugs is driven by marketing trends–and now for the first time by something even more dreadful and insidious than mere marketing.

To begin their market campaigns for the newer antipsychotic agents, the drug companies created the myth that these products were not as dangerous as the old antipsychotic drugs, which were becoming recognized as highly toxic. Especially hard to ignore, it was demonstrated that the old antipsychotics cause tardive dyskinesia, a disfiguring and sometimes disabling array of abnormal movements in 5-8 percent per year cumulative of otherwise healthy patients and more than 20 percent of older patients. But even the unproven and ultimately false claim that the newer drugs were safer could not make a huge market for them. Even if these were wonder drugs, they were wonderful for a relatively tiny percent of the population. The drug companies had to create a new patient population market and that market became “bipolar disorder.”

Once much rarer than schizophrenia, bipolar disorder would soon become one of the most common diagnoses made in medicine and psychiatry. Indeed, while ordinary folks used to talk about their biochemical imbalances and depression, now they’ve upgraded to having bipolar disorder.

Lithium, once the magic bullet without side effects for bipolar disorder–then called manic-depressive disorder–had turned out to be a severe central nervous system toxin that over the years ruins mental function while also producing thyroid disorders, kidney failure and a host of other serious problems. The discrediting of lithium created a new niche for antipsychotic drugs–to be used as “mood stabilizers” for people with severe ups and downs. But it was a relatively smalll niche to begin with.

Where would all the new bipolar patients come from? Many of them would come from the fertile imagination of drug company sponsored psychiatrists who found bipolar disorder in everything from toddlers with temper tantrums to adults with bursts of energy followed by a natural period of feeling fatigued. Leaders in child psychiatry like Harvard’s Joseph Biederman were literally paid under the table to push antipsychotic medications for bipolar disorder in children. A recent study showed that children labeled bipolar actually receive more adult antipsychotic drugs than adults labeled bipolar . Another recent study covering 2000-2002 showed that 18 percent of child visits to a psychiatrist included antipsychotic treatment, and 92 percent of those were for the newer so-called second generation drugs. It took a great deal of marketing to convince physicians that these relatively untried and highly toxic antipsychotic drugs are that safe and effective in children.

But even marketing bipolar disorder to the professions and the public was insufficient to create a huge enough market to satisfy the drug companies. Here’s where the irony of ironies came into play. The newer antidepressants–once the leading drugs in the world–frequently cause mania. They do so in millions of patients, children and adults alike, every year. These once most popular drugs in the world by causing mania made and continue to make the market for the next wave of most popular drugs–the antipsychotic drugs being used as mood stabilizers.

How common is antidepressant-induced mania? Very common. Several studies have found that 6 to 8 percent of patients exposed to antidepressants will develop a manic disorder. One research study, for example, found in a retrospective study that Paxil produced mania in 8.6 percent of patients exposed. Other studies find the rates as high as 17 percent And if a person has already shown a manic tendency or has experienced a manic-like episode, antidepressants will push one-quarter to one-third into new manias (For a review, see P. Breggin, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, 2008, pp. 157-165) . Yet misguided psychiatrists commonly give antidepressants to patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The result? Millions of people suffer from medication-induced mania and other expressions of what I call “medication madness.”

When I took my psychiatric residency at Harvard in Boston and at SUNY in Syracuse in the early 1960s, we never saw or diagnosed bipolar disorder in children. In my four years of training, I saw one 19-year-old in a manic state and a few adults. When a person was admitted in a manic condition talking a mile a minute, imagining grand things about themselves, making outrageous plans, bursting with anger and energy, unable to sleep and otherwise euphoric, the condition was so unusual that we would hold grand rounds, a medical show-and-tell, to discuss the patient.

Now psychiatric wards are filled with patients having their second and third or umpteenth manic episode and every psychiatrist’s day is filled with patients diagnosed bipolar. It’s mostly about antidepressant-induced mania. Every single child I have evaluated who has suffered what looks like a manic episode has been taking stimulants or antidepressants, both of which cause mania. At least 9 out of 10 adults I’ve seen in the last two decades who have suffered emotional episodes that could be diagnosed as mania had them in direct response to stimulants or antidepressants–mostly the newer antidepressants starting with Prozac.

In the official diagnostic system, these are not cases of bipolar mania but cases of medication induced mood disorder with manic features; but they are almost always mistakenly called bipolar disorder in order to avoid identifying the drug and the prescriber as the causative agents.

For those who want further details, I have reviewed all the studies mentioned in this report in my medical book, “Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition” (2008). In my popular book, “Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime” (2008), I have provided dozens of in-depth illustrations of lives ruined by psychiatric drugs, especially the newer antidepressants.

Read the rest of the article here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/making-a-market-in-antips_b_720861.html

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$1,000 a Pop: How Forest Labs Bribed Doctors to Prescribe Antidepressants to Kids

admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:53:39 +0000

BNET

By Jim Edwards | September 15, 2010

Forest Labs (FRX) appears to have initially underestimated how much it needed to pay the feds to go away: In 2009, the company said it had set aside $170 million in case it needed to settle a Department of Justice investigation of the kickbacks it paid in its marketing of Celexa and Lexapro, two antidepressants. Today, the company paid $313 million to wrap up the probes.

Forest’s management is used to lavish spending, however, as the whistleblower complaints behind the settlement allege.

The meat of Forest’s wrongdoing is that the company promoted Celexa for children even though the FDA had specifically rejected the drug for kids, and even though European data showed it was not useful in youths. The company did something similar with Lexapro — one pharmaceutical sales rep recommended crushing up Lexapro into apple sauce in order to make it more palatable to children.

Forest overcame resistance to the pediatric use of its antidepressants by bribing doctors with cash and gifts, the lawsuits alleged. Among the goodies Forest handed out were:

Tickets to St. Louis Cardinals games.
A $1,000 certificate to Alain Ducasse, one of the best (and most expensive) restaurants in New York, according to this suit.
A trip to see a George Carlin concert. (They’re antidepressants and he’s funny, geddit?).
$1,000 in cash to attend dinner at the Doral Park Country Club in Miami.
A trip to the Great Escape amusement park in New York.
Tickets to The Nutcracker at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., according to this suit.

The settlement, in which Forest pleads guilty to the accusations against it, also implies that one unnamed Forest executive lied to Congress in September 2004 — which is in itself a crime.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/1000-a-pop-how-forest-labs-bribed-doctors-to-prescribe-antidepressants-to-kids/5753

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Doctors, Drug Companies, Politicians & Corruptions

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:22:40 +0000

The Asian Tribune, August 21, 2010

By Shenali Waduge

They say there’s no money in healthy people. But, why is the pharmaceutical industry the most profitable industry in the world? It is because they have mastered the art of concocting the disorder, creating the drug for the disorder and then bombarding the public with advertisements to convince them they’re afflicted, leaving little choice but to get “prescribed”.

The growth in the pharmaceutical industry began to expand towards the 1970s. Pharmaceutical companies began to form mutual partnerships and began dominating the production of medicines. Advertising boomed making it possible for consumers to be enticed into believing there were miracle cures or drugs that would make people look young forever, increase sexual libido, maintain youthful looking skin with zero after effects or side effects.

Companies spend billions on “inventing” new drugs…they also spend billions on marketing them, USD53billion to be precise. But, how “innovative” are these companies? Most research and clinical trials are carried out at universities and funded by Governments. What happens thereafter is that drug companies “buy these innovations” and quickly patent them and quickly set up manufacturing plants. The only “innovation” done by these companies is to modify the existing drug something as minor as changing the color of the coating! A patented drug generally lasts for 20 years. It is only after rigorous study and testing which takes a good 10 to 15 years that Governmental authorities grant permission to market and sell drugs.

Loopholes in patent systems ensure companies are able to keep generic competitors at bay for years. These patented branded drugs naturally provides high profit margins but before the patent expires and competitors enter with a generic drug sold at far lesser prices, owners of branded drugs put out a generic version before the branded version expires…giving his company a head start in the sale of generic drugs. In 2006, the world had spent US$643billion on prescription drugs with US accounting for almost half of global pharmaceutical market. The US pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable of all businesses in the US.

It would not surprise anyone that companies spent up to $11billion annually on free samples, $6billion on sales representatives, $3billion on vague advertisements, we can only guess how many more billions is spent on bribing doctors, bribing researchers, bribing universities, bribing health officers, pharmacists, providing kickbacks and even running bogus “medical education” programs.

Essentially, what drug companies’ end up doing is using tax payer’s money to pay for medical research which they buy off, they then spend on massive advertising campaigns aimed at misleading the public about the effects of these drugs and “encourage” doctors to prescribe them!

Year in and year out drug companies end up the most successful industry with stunning profits part of which are used to buy off politicians and further promote themselves as champions of social responsibility and good corporate ethics!

There are no business ethics in the pharmaceutical industry – the industry is synonymous with money, profits, power and control. Pharmaceutical companies have mastered how to market social phobia/anxiety disorders in order to sell mind altering drugs. Does it not surprise and make you wonder why scores of people are being treated for mental disorders?

There are teenagers on anti-depressants and anti-psychotics because pharmaceutical companies want to ensure they have customers for life! Some prescription drugs are sold at more than 500,000% markup over the actual cost of their raw ingredients, naturally drug companies will do anything to sell more pills and it is why they end up inventing fictitious diseases and force parents to make addicts out of their children. There are scores of drugs available that are “habit-forming” tranquilizers?

Despite the number of drugs available why are people sicker than ever? Drugs have not helped people instead drug companies have made people addicted to drugs and suffering further from the side-affects of taking so many different combinations of drugs. In the US, over 100,000 Americans die annually from prescription drugs while a further 2million are injured by them.

The dominating companies in global pharmaceutical industry today are MERCK, Roche (fined in the US and Europe for participating in illegal price fixing cartel), Pfizer (ranked no.1, the makers of viagra the wonder drug of the 90s…. and probably soon to put out a drug that may do the opposite of viagra!), Bayer the inventor of Asprin….however hundreds and thousands of people die every year from prescription drugs? 27,000 people died of vioxx which is a nosteroidal anti-inflammatory drug which has been withdrawn over safety concerns associated with heart attacks, strokes. (though first approved in 1999 but withdrawn in 2004) It is believed that over 80m worldwide prescribed it in 2003 and its producer Merck and Co made sales revenues of US$2.5billion.

What is ironic is that there is not a single chronic disease which has been cured as a result of taking prescription drugs. What these drugs have done is to only treat the symptoms. Has chemotherapy proved scientifically accurate? It does shrink tumors but it adds nothing to a patient’s lifespan. The world is becoming sicker, fatter and more depressed than ever. The advice that people should listen to is not being given…eat healthy, avoid processed foods, avoid refined carbohydrates, avoid soft drinks etc…are rarely highlighted.

What’s more our doctors are duping us too…! In the US some mid-sized drug companies have close upon 1000 representatives lobby with companies spending over $5billion annually on sending these representatives to physician offices. The US spends $19billion annually on promotions, influencing doctors and other health professionals. As a result the physicians are lured into prescribing drugs associated with particular drug companies who ensure these physicians are well looked after and patients end up paying far more than they are required to as well as end up having to take another set of prescribed drugs to cut off the side-affects associated with the earlier drug!

Doctors are even paid to conduct fraudulent clinical trials on patients who are encouraged to take drugs for a 12month period to see its affects while the drug company profits through that particular year and the doctors enjoy the kickbacks as well. Some doctors who prescribe a particular drug company’s products and avoided competing drugs are even paid “consulting fees”. It is all a scam, and a vast majority of physicians become party to these unethical medical acts, pocketing the benefits & dosing up their patients with whatever drugs they’ve been told to prescribe. Doctors today are recipients of airfares & hotel expenses, luxury vehicles, even repairs and tyre replacements!

What is poignant and significant is that while physicians who may attend academic sessions with the thought of updating their know-how they are at the risk of being manipulated by pharmaceutical companies who pay high-profile scientists/physicians to speak on topics relevant to their products. Similarly, medical journals also help to promote specific products whose manuscripts are written by the pharmaceutical companies.

Essentially the public is at risk as a result of the direct and indirect relationships between pharmaceutical industry and the physicians. It certainly does breach professional ethics and may even bring dangers to patients.

Read the rest of this article here: http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2010/08/21/doctors-drug-companies-politicians-corruptions

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Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden

cchrint — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:11:17 +0000

Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden

The One Click Group
By Janne Larsson
June 29, 2010

This unique report presents data about the preceding psychiatric drug treatment for all persons who committed suicide in Sweden 2007. The conclusion is that a large percentage of the persons who committed suicide had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of and close to the suicide.
Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden.

This is a report about suicides committed in Sweden (with around 9 million citizens) in 2007 and the psychiatric drug treatment that preceded these suicides.

The report has three main parts:

• It gives unique data about all suicides committed in 2007 and the psychiatric drugs that the persons received within a year of the suicide.

• It compares these data with autopsy reports about psychiatric drugs found in the blood (of 98%) of all the persons who committed suicide in 2007.

• It gives extensive information about the psychiatric drug treatment given within a year to the subgroup of persons who committed suicide in 2007 and then were reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare by reason of law 3 – one third of all suicides committed that year.

The data presented on these pages should have been published by the responsible national authorities.

A large percentage of the persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of their suicide.

The idea that persons who are depressed are suffering from “chemical imbalances” and are deficient in the substance serotonin has been marketed by the pharmaceutical companies selling antidepressants (in the class of antidepressant drugs called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil/Seroxat, Zoloft) for more than a decade. The intensive marketing has led persons to believe that their low mood is a deficiency disease – and that it is vital to supply the substance that corrects this deficiency – the antidepressant drug.

But there is no scientific evidence that a low mood is caused by a ”chemical imbalance” in the brain. The hypothesis has been rejected with the following words by one of the most well known names in the field, Dr. David Healy,“The serotonin theory of depression is comparable to the masturbatory theory of insanity.”

The Swedish medical agencies and their psychiatric consultants have used old data from forensic toxicological screenings to mislead the public and to heavily increase the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

The most important information in this area is the patients’ medical history; the treatment history. Antidepressants, neuroleptics and other psychiatric drugs may cause harmful changes in the brain and these brain dysfunctions do not vanish when the drugs are discontinued – in many cases they cause chronic dysfunction to the brain, exemplified by the known neurological harm caused by neuroleptics. Many patients also get serious withdrawal reactions; reactions that can be so severe that they can lead to suicide.

Better sources of information are the unpublished clinical trials of psychiatric drugs done by pharmaceutical companies, and the important studies done by independent researchers. A number of these studies show that antidepressants and neuroleptics increase the risk of suicidal behaviour and directly cause effects that lead to suicide.

Download and read the full report here; http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/Psychiatric%20Drugs%20&%20Suicide,%20Sweden%202007.pdf

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Behind the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex; Pharma-funded front groups masquerading as “patient advocates”

cchrint — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:18:36 +0000

Scoop Independent News
By Evelyn Pringle
June 22, 2010

Non-Profit Advocacy Groups

As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called “patient advocacy” organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades.

Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.

Gigantic Pyramid

The psychiatric front groups form a gigantic pyramid and once pharmaceutical money enters the system through a major organization, it gets channeled into a huge spider-web that weaves through many groups, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where it came from or where it all went. Often, when the grant reports of the drug companies list a large donation to one organization, the annual reports of the other groups will show smaller gifts from that same organization.

The “charity” groups are exempt from income tax and the “contributions” funneled through them are tax deductible. The money is used for disease mongering campaigns to both market disorders and pressure public health care programs and private insurers to pay for expensive treatments.

“Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” according to Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health watchdog group.

In a June 2, 2010, commentary titled, “Psychiatric Fads and Overdiagnosis,” on the Psychology Today website, Dr Allen Frances points out that it “is too bad that there is no advocacy group for normality that could effectively push back against all the forces aligned to expand the reach of mental disorders.”

The leaders of the supposedly “non-profits” earn outrageously high salaries, along with excellent benefit packages, while many of the patients they claim to represent are encouraged to seek federal disability payments of under $700 a month, and apply for public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid, to make ends meet. The top officials will often move from a leadership role in one organization to a higher position in another.

The drug makers rely on the front groups to do their bidding any time profits are threatened. For instance, if the FDA is considering adding a black box warning about a deadly side effect to a drug’s label, which may result in a drop in sales, representatives of front groups will show up at the FDA advisory panel hearings to testify against adding the warning.

They will also lobby FDA panels whenever there is a chance to increase profits, such as enlarging the drug customer base. In June 2009, the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee was set to meet to evaluate AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Pfizer’s Geodon and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa for use with 13 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 10 to 17 year-olds diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder.

On June 8, 2009, nine front groups issued a joint statement urging the panel to vote to approve all three drugs for kids. The groups signing the letter included the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Families for Depression Awareness, Mental Health America, National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

Read entire article: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1006/S00162.htm

Also see: http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

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Meet the Psychiatrist Pushing For A Brave New World of Pre-Drugging Kids—Patrick McGorry

cchrint — Fri, 21 May 2010 23:26:59 +0000

By CCHR International
May 21, 2010

One of the most controversial proposed disorders for the upcoming revision of psychiatry’s billing bible of mental disorders, (the DSM-5) is Psychosis Risk Syndrome (PRS) a “mental disorder” that, if voted into DSM, would confirm the allegations that psychiatry is manufacturing a Brave New World for itself—heavily backed by Big Pharma—of drugging children before they develop a “mental illness.” Already criticized for the millions of children being needlessly drugged and the lack of scientific criteria to substantiate any mental diagnosis as a legitimate medical condition, some psychiatrists now want the power to pull out their crystal ball and predict the onset of a psychosis and drug it before it has even occurred. And perhaps the strongest proponent is Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry.

Even psychiatrist Allen Frances, former chairman of the previous DSM task force expressed alarm over the proposed diagnosis and its repercussions should it be legitimized, stating, PRS “stands out as the most ill-conceived and potentially harmful.” The Syndrome fails badly on all 3 counts, he says:

“1. It would misidentify many teenagers who are not really at risk for psychosis;

2. The treatment they would most often receive (atypical antipsychotic medication) has no proven efficacy; but,

3. It does have definite dangerous complications.”

Frances adds: “Drug company marketing would influence parents and clinicians to be especially alert to any strangeness in teenagers.” False positives could be as high as 70-90 percent.[i] This can only lead to greater numbers of children and adolescents being harmfully drugged—already one of the major criticisms against psychiatry and a point of contention among many psychiatrists today.

Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, speaking at the APA convention in New Orleans, as a cheerleader for “early intervention” (i.e. pre-drugging) is undeterred. Despite the unpredictability and risk of the drugs prescribed to treat PRS, McGorry wants to go full steam ahead, increasing the number of children being placed on extremely dangerous and even lethal drugs. It should come as no surprise that McGorry is a paid consultantfor, and has received speaker’s fees from AstraZenecca, Janssen-Cilag, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer.[ii]

The theory of PRS wasn’t McGorry’s. He credits Dr. Ewen Cameron, the Canadian psychiatrist who became infamous in the 1980s after it was revealed he had performed cruel and brain-damaging experiments on his patients in the 1950s and 1960s with funding from the CIA.[iii] However, McGorry tested it in a world-first trial. Another study he conducted in 2002 was funded with an unrestricted grant from Janssen-Cilag and supported by pharmaceutical company-funded groups NARSAD and the Stanley Foundation, as well as several Australian agencies. McGorry and colleagues predictably found that risperidone (Risperdal)—made by Janssen—reduced the risk of “transition to psychosis” in young people.[iv] Risperdal has been linked to Type 2 diabetes.

In Australia, McGorry’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Center’s (EPPIC) preventive treatment center for young people, PACE, receives drug company funding from Janssen-Cilag. Much of the policy development embodied in the Australian Clinical Guidelines has come out of EPPIC research programs. As Richard Gosden, Ph.D., a highly respected Australian author and academic stated: “This may have paid off handsomely for the company…. It may not be coincidental that a half page of the Clinical Guidelines is dedicated to dosage recommendations for using risperidone in first-episode psychosis. The Clinical Guidelines do not extend these dosage recommendations to include other schizophrenia drugs and the recommendations for risperidone give the appearance of an official endorsement of the drug.”^[v]

McGorry’s theory has psychiatry’s skeptics and even psychiatrists aghast:

One respected American research group equated the practice of pre-drugging children to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of—but do not have—breast cancer.” [vi]

Honorary Professor Anthony Pelosi from the Department of Psychiatry, Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, stated, “So far,evidence from randomized trials does not support the use ofpsychological therapies or drugs as preventive interventions.”[vii] Further, “After teachers, college counselors, and familieswere encouraged to refer young people with possibly prodromal [early] symptoms directly to the same clinic for the same care plans…almost 90% were receiving unnecessary ‘preventive’ interventions.”^[viii]

Fellow Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren says the diagnostic criteria for PRS “has no scientific validity whatsoever…it can never be reliable and…will have huge unforeseen consequences.” Essentially, it means “putting large numbers of teenagers and young adults under the long-term supervision and control of psychiatrists” and that “supervision” includes the “aggressive, indefinite prescription of antipsychotic drugs.” It is the “clearest example I know of pseudoscience. Not since [lobotomies] has psychiatry stumbled so far from the principle of Primum, non nocere. First, do no harm.”^[ix]

Dr. Richard Warner, professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, counters the idea that science drives McGorry’s pre-disorder assessment, stating that the screening instrument he uses “is not that accurate in routine use.” Further, “McGorry speculates that a variety of interventions may be effective in preventing schizophrenia in high-risk cases…. Given the expected number of false positives, the potential for harm is significant,” stated Dr. Warner. [x]

Dr. Jerald Block, a US psychiatrist writing in Bioethics Forum, reported that “preventive pharmacology” (which McGorry, et al. practice) is “ethically questionable territory” because the treatments given “frequently have side effects and complications” and “you are potentially harming people.” The symptoms used to identify them as at risk of schizophrenia are “also remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.”^[xi]

Melissa Raven, psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst, adjunct lecturer in Public Health at Flinders University, South Australia, and David Webb, board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and working with the research/policy office with the Australia Federation of Disability Organizations, were published last month, writing: “McGorry’s campaign is part of a wider push to promote the medicalization of mental health (for which psychosocial wellbeing is a better term).” “Further doubts must be raised about McGorry’s agenda when you see the substantial funding his organization (Orygen Youth Health) receives from the pharmaceutical industry and also from the US Stanley Foundation, which is notorious for its particularly aggressive approach to the detention and mandatory treatment of people labeled with psychiatric disorders.” He has “personally received funding from many manufacturers of antipsychotics, frequently reports no conflicts of interest, particularly in his many recent Medical Journal of Australia articles, including a supplement on early intervention that repeatedly advocates the use of antipsychotics.”^[xii]

Psychosis Risk Syndrome is nothing more than psychiatrists with conflicts of interest drumming up more business at the risk of teenage lives, while increasing the profits for the pharmaceutical industry they serve.

[i] Allen Frances, M.D., “DSM5 ‘Psychosis Risk Syndrome’–Far Too Risky,” Psychology Today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201003/dsm5-psychosis-risk-syndrome-far-too-risky.

[ii] http://www.mhanet.ca/documents/2008/Research-Colloquium/0920%20-%20Keynote%20MCGORRY.pdf; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695.

[iii] Richard Gosden, Ph.D., “Pre-Psychotic Treatment for Schizophrenia: Preventive Medicine, Social Control, or Drug Marketing Strategy?” Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Vol 1, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 165-177, http://sites.google.com/site/richardgosden/ehss.

[iv] Arch Gen Psychiatry, Vol 59, Oct. 2002, http://www.meb.uni-bonn.de/psychiatrie/zebb/literatur/mcgorry.pdf.

[v] Richard Gosden, Ph.D., “Pre-Psychotic Treatment for Schizophrenia: Preventive Medicine, Social Control, or Drug Marketing Strategy?” Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Vol 1, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 165-177, http://sites.google.com/site/richardgosden/ehss.

[vi] http://www.ministryoflies.com/pdf-articles/Yale-Lilly.pdf.

[vii] Anthony Pelosi, “Head to Head, Is early intervention in the major psychiatric disorders justified? No,” BMJ 2008;337:a710, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[viii] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[ix] Niall McLaren, M.D., “Psychosis Risk Syndrome (PRS),” 14 May 2010 (soon to be published).

[x] Richard Warner, MB, DPM, is director of Colorado Recovery in Boulder, Colorado, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, “Early intervention in psychosis: Future or fad?” Centre for Addiction and Mental Health website, http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[xi] http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=386; http://ww.bioethicsforum.org/ethics-of-preventive-psychopharmacologic-treatments.asp.

[xii] David Webb, Melissa Raven, “McGorry’s ‘early intervention’ in mental health: a prescription for disaster,” Online Opinion, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10267.

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