CCHR International » Seroquel

Grassley & Senate Watchdog Target Doctors Prescribing Mass Amounts of Dangerous Drugs

cchrint — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:32:19 +0000

ProPublica
By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber
January 24, 2012

An influential U.S. senator is grilling officials in nearly three-dozen states, demanding to know how they are cracking down on physicians who prescribe massive amounts of potentially dangerous prescription drugs.

Iowa Republican Charles Grassley sent letters to 34 states Monday asking what steps they had taken to investigate doctors whose prescribing of antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs and painkillers to Medicaid patients far exceeds that of their peers.

The request is a follow-up to a 2010 letter Grassley sent all states that requested statistics on top prescribers of these drugs.

“These types of drugs have addictive properties, and the potential for fraud and abuse by prescribers and patients is extremely high,” Grassley wrote in Monday’s letters. “When these drugs are prescribed to Medicaid patients, it is the American people who pay the price for over-prescription, abuse, and fraud.”

ProPublica reported in November that Florida allowed at least three physicians to keep treating and prescribing drugs to the poor amid clear signs of possible misconduct. One doctor kept prescribing narcotic pain pills to Medicaid patients for more than a year after he was arrested and charged in 2010 with trafficking in them.

A number of the top-prescribing Medicaid doctors around the country are listed in our Dollars for Docs database of payments made by 12 pharmaceutical companies to physicians for speaking and consulting Medicaid, jointly funded by the states and federal government, provides health care coverage to about 60 million low-income enrollees.

Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has long argued for greater transparency in health care. The painkillers and mental health drugs Grassley is inquiring about are among the top drivers of Medicaid drug spending.

His letter to Ohio notes that the top prescriber of the anti-psychotic Abilify wrote 13,825 prescriptions in 2009 — about 54 prescriptions per weekday. Ohio paid $6.7 million for that those prescriptions, state officials reported to Grassley.

The biggest prescriber of another anti-psychotic, Seroquel, wrote 18,890 scripts at a cost of $5.7 million. Grassley wrote the tally would amount to nine prescriptions per hour. When Ohio submitted the data to Grassley last year, it did not identify the doctors by name or license number.

“After an extensive review of prescribing habits of the serial prescribers of pain and mental-health drugs in Ohio, I have concerns about the oversight and enforcement of Medicaid abuse in your state,” he wrote. “While I am sensitive to the concerns of misinterpretation of the data you provided, the numbers themselves are quite shocking.”

Grassley’s letter to Maine cites a physician who wrote 1,867 prescriptions for the powerful painkiller OxyContin in 2009, nearly double the second-highest prescriber. The doctor also wrote 1,723 prescriptions for another painkiller, Roxicodone, nearly three times as many as the next highest prescriber.

Calls to officials in Ohio and Maine have not been returned.

In his letters to the 34 states, Grassley asked that officials tell him by Feb. 13 what action, if any, they have taken against top prescribers, whether those doctors are still eligible to bill Medicaid, whether any of the doctors were referred to their state medical boards for investigation, and what systems have been set up to track possibly excessive prescribing, among others.

Grassley is sending letters to 12 other states that never provided him data, as requested, on their top Medicaid prescribers. Four other states will not receive follow-up letters because the senator felt their initial responses to his 2010 letter were adequate.

ProPublica reported in November that since Grassley’s initial letter requesting the data in 2010, Louisiana, Arizona, Oklahoma and New York have kicked some high-prescribing physicians out of Medicaid. California has temporarily suspended or placed restrictions on 15 to 20 doctors in the past two years for prescribing disproportionately high volumes of painkillers and antipsychotics to Medicaid patients.

But Grassley said more needs to be done.

“When a doctor writes more prescriptions than seems humanly possible, it makes sense to ask questions,” he said in a statement to ProPublica. The statement noted that some states never responded to his original letter in 2010.

“If state and federal taxpayers are being cheated because of inappropriate prescriptions,” Grassley said, “the state and federal governments have to get to the bottom of it and stop it.”

Read article here: http://www.propublica.org/article/senate-watchdog-targets-high-prescribing-medicaid-docs

« Return to news items

News Feed

4 Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs

cchrint — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:19:57 +0000

Big Pharma uses ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and sell diseases to adults and their children.

Alternet
By Martha Rosenberg
January 9, 2012

It’s no secret that advertising works. Big Pharma wouldn’t spend over $4 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising if it didn’t mean massive profits.

What is more unknown is why drug ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and “sell” diseases are often the most common–and effective–even when the drugs themselves are of questionable safety.

The nation’s fourth most frequent drug ads in 2009 for were Cymbalta, making Eli Lilly $3.1 billion in one year, despite the antidepressant’s links to liver problems and suicide. Pfizer spent $157 million advertising Lyrica for fibromyalgia in 2009, despite the seizure pill’s links to life-threatening allergic reactions. The same year, it spent $107 million advertising the antidepressant Pristiq, even though it also had links to liver problems.

So, how does Pharma dupe us into using unsafe drugs? Today’s drug ads, targeted directly to consumers since 1999, seem like they sell diseases and often cast women, children, the elderly and mentally ill in a bad light. But a quick look at ads before direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) in medical journals shows that drug ads have always done so. It’s just that patients didn’t used to see them.

Here are some of Pharma’s most offensive ad campaigns, then and now.

1. You’re Sicker Than You Think

When psychiatric drugs first became popular for use in the general population, in the late 1960s, everyday personality problems became imbued with psychiatric labels. “Lady, your anxiety is showing (over a coexisting depression),” says a 1970 ad, showing an older, wrinkly woman in a bouffant wig with gigantic sunglasses and garish jewelry. “On the visible level, this middle-aged patient dresses to look too young, exhibits a tense, continuous smile and may have bitten nails or overplucked eyebrows,” says the ad copy. “What doesn’t show as clearly is the coexisting depression.”

The ad, both sexist and ageist, suggests the woman needs the antidepressant and tranquillizer Triavil.

Another ad from 1968 shows a bored, upper-middle-class couple whose hauteur is also said to really be depression. “Do you have patients who try to hide frustration behind conformity?” says the ad for the antidepressant Aventyl HCl.

You’d think such demeaning ads would vanish with DTC advertising because people would be offended. But You’re Sicker-Than-You-Think ads are alive and well since DTC advertising and even flowering.

A three-page consumer ad in the late 2000s similarly conveys that everyday psychological traits could actually be dire mental problems that require medication. If you are “talking too fast,” “spending out of control,” “sleeping less,” “flying off the handle” and “buying things you don’t need,” you could be suffering from bipolar disorder said the ads, which appeared in magazines like People. And here you thought it was the coffee. Accompanying photos of a woman screaming into a phone and contorting her face are so extreme they could come out of the movie Halloween Part II, if the woman were holding a knife.

Click to enlarge image

Psychiatric drugs are not just advertised for everyday personality problems. Pharma is pushing them for everyday pain conditions. Eli Lilly’s original depression campaign for the antidepressant Cymbalta, “Depression Hurts,” seems to anticipate its subsequent approval for pain conditions including back problems. Now ads tout Cymbalta as a “non-narcotic, once daily analgesic FDA approved for three indications across four different chronic pain conditions,” as if it does not have severe controversial psychiatric risks including the suicide of volunteers who tested it.

And seizure and epilepsy drugs, known for major allergic and psychiatric reactions, are also becoming pain franchises. “What’s causing your chronic widespread muscle pain?” asks an ad for the seizure and epilepsy drug Lyrica. “The answer may be overactive nerves,” says the ad, even though “widespread muscle pain” and “over-active nerves,” are not mentioned in the approved labeling for Lyrica, says pharmaceutical reporter John Mack. The military spent $35 million on seizure and epilepsy drugs in 2009 alone, including for migraines, headaches and pain.

And speaking of overkill, ads for genetically engineered injected drugs like Humira, approved to treat serious diseases like Crohn’s disease, psoriatic arthritis and chronic plaque psoriasis look like they are designed to sell beer or beauty treatments, not immune suppressing drugs that invite cancers and lethal infections.

DTC ads don’t just escalate everyday problems into psychiatric problems, they also escalate real psychiatric problems into irresponsible, sensationalistic stereotypes. Ads for the best-selling antipsychotic Risperdal, widely used in children, and in soldiers with PTSD, suggest that people with mental illness have hallucinatory fears about “boiling rain” and “dog women.” The “dog woman” ad, showing a half-dog, half-woman crouched on her elbows, her eyes blackened, furthers the sensationalizing of mental illness with the tagline, “Because relapses are a living nightmare.”

2. Your Kid Is Sick

DTC ads don’t just convince people they’re in need of new drugs, but also that their kids may be, too. And it’s been going on for decades.

Long before Pharma convinced parents, teachers and clinicians that millions of US kids had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), kids were said to suffer from “minimal brain dysfunction” (MBD) and “hyperkinesis,” two conditions that were essentially the same as ADHD. In fact, so many kids had MBD by 1976 that an ad for the drug Cylert hailed the “Importance of single daily dose to the child, the parents and the teacher,” because kids wouldn’t have to be singled out anymore at pill time at school. (ADHD has been so huckstered, a YMCA ad spoofs it with the headline, “Before video games, before Facebook, before Ritalin, there was basketball.”)

Yet neither Cylert–whose approval the FDA withdrew in 2005 because of liver failure and deaths–or the current ADHD drugs are safe. In 2009, researchers reported that kids are more likely to die sudden deaths while taking them and the American Heart Association recommends electrocardiograms (ECGs) before kids take them. And yet, combined sales of ADHD drugs continue to grow from $4.05 billion to $7.42 billion in 2010.

Thirty years ago, it certainly looked like kids were being overmedicated. They were given the antipsychotic Thorazine for their “hyperactivity,” “hostility,” sleep problems and even for vomiting. Picky eaters and kids who wet the bed were given tranquillizers. Kids with tics, stuttering and school phobia were given the tranquillizer Miltown.

Click to enlarge image

But today, ads promoting drugs for kids continue, and now they are aimed at parents. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between ads for drugs or ads for sugary cereals! Pharma tells moms to give their kids the bubble gum-flavored ADHD med, LiquADD and the grape-flavored ADHD med, Methylin. The latter campaign, to parents, is “Give ‘em the GRAPE!”

DTC advertising has also convinced parents their kids suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) otherwise known as acid reflux disease, which was barely a disease in adults much less kids, before consumer advertising. “GERD Can Be a Big Problem for Little Kids,” say award-winning ads for Prevacid, which won a “RX Club” Silver award in 2004. In Europe, kids are treated for another “adult disease” and given chewable Liptitor to lower their cholesterol.

Some of Pharma’s most aggressive advertising has been designed to convince parents their children’s minor sniffles or wheezing are imminent asthma and require immediate and expensive drugs. To make the asthma drug Singulair (which also comes in a yummy chewable), the seventh most popular drug in 2010, Merck inked partnerships with the American Academy of Pediatrics and Scholastic, both of which parents consider neutral organizations and not Pharma mouthpieces. Merck also partnered with Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Peter Vanderkaay and NBA kid clubs to sell the asthma drug.

“A kid who’s got what your kid’s got is out doing what your kid’s not,” says one Singulair ad campaign. “Find out how you can help your child breathe a little easier.”

If Singulair were not harmful, the huckstering would simply be a case of wasting money and overmedicating kids. But Singulair has been linked to both pediatric suicide and to emotional, behavioral and ADHD-like symptoms in kids, the latter likely inspiring parents to give their kids “the grape.”

Of course, another kid-targeted campaign is for the vaccine against the sexually transmitted Papillomavirus or HPV, immortalized by Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann in hot exchanges this fall. Many object to the sexualizing of 9-year-olds, to government lining Pharma’s pockets by promoting the vaccine (including overseas) and to the risks of the vaccines themselves. But the ads for Gardasil and Cervarix are also offensive.

Last spring, poster-sized ads for Gardasil on Chicago’s commuter trains pretended to sell real estate in sought-after neighborhoods. A closer look revealed descriptions of women in those neighborhoods who thought they didn’t need the HPV vaccine but did, positioning HPV not only as a general risk to the population, like flu, rather than an STD but as “hip.”

HPV vaccine ads got even cooler when GSK rolled out Cervarix extravaganza TV ads and its “armed against cervical cancer” campaign with an Angelina Jolie-like model displaying a skinny arm with a Cervarix tattoo.

3. Be Like Me, and Can Your Beer Do This?

Click to enlarge image

Prescription drugs may affect health, but they are still consumer products sold with the same marketing principles as toothpaste or beer. In fact, the wacky, “Can Your Beer Do This?” Miller Lite campaign of the 1990s, came back to life to sell the antidepressant Wellbutrin XR. In a glossy, color magazine ad, a young man rows his girlfriend on a scenic lake and lists the benefits of his Wellbutrin XR. “Can your medicine do all that?” he asks.

What does it say about the success of DTC advertising that people are assumed to have an antidepressant?

Experiential ads also sell prescription drugs like vintage ads for the “Kodak Moment,” “Maalox Moment” and the old cigarette ads for the “L&M Moment” did. “Lunesta Sleep. Have You Tried it?” asks a 2007 ad in Parade magazine, elevating the experience to something akin to “designer sleep.”

Click to enlarge image

And just as celebrities move other consumer products, they have been deployed to sell prescription drugs. TV personality Joan Lunden and former baseball star Mike Piazza stumped for the allergy pill Claritin, ice skater Dorothy Hamill and track star Bruce Jenner for the pain pill Vioxx, and Sen. Bob Dole for Viagra. NASCAR figure Bobby Labonte also endorsed the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL in 2004. Yes, his medicine could “do all that.”

But there has been a problem with celebrity drug endorsements, unlike product endorsements in which a celebrity like Tiger Woods or Martha Stewart could taint a product, a prescription drug can taint a celebrity! Did Dorothy Hamill know that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks in users when she stumped for it? Did the model Lauren Hutton know that hormone replacement therapy causes a 26 percent higher incidence of breast cancer, a 29 percent increase in heart attacks, a 41 percent increase in strokes, and a doubling of the rate of blood clots when she shilled for it? Does actress Sally Field know that bone drugs like Boniva are linked to esophageal cancer, jaw bone death and the very fractures they are supposed to prevent as she pushes them?

Of course, good product marketing includes public relations. When Pharma sells a disease with no mention of the drug it is really selling, it’s called “unbranded” advertising. Since DTC advertising, Pharma has invaded public service announcements (PSAs) that TV and radio stations confer for free, pretending their take-a-drug messages serve the public good, like messages to change smoke detector batteries or put kids in car seats.

One such “educational” “awareness” campaign called “Depression Is Real” saturated the radio air waves in 2011, funded by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which was investigated by Congress for its Pharma funding from Wyeth, part of Pfizer, and other groups. The high-budget ads, running for free, compare depression to diabetes because it doesn’t go away and to cancer because it can be fatal.

4. One Kind of Ad You Won’t See Anymore

Animal research at drug companies and the National Institutes of Health is a great scientific iceberg of which people only see a tip. In drug development, millions of animals die to prove a drug’s “safety.” At academic and medical centers, animal study grants from NIH provide millions to researchers and labs.

As sentiment grows against animal experiments and the government’s gigantic National Primate Research Centers (new rules will limit the use of chimpanzees), the research is downplayed and even hidden. But there was a time when Pharma actually flaunted animal research.

Click to enlarge image

“More than a decade of animal research on various animal species has suggested that Librium (chlordiazepozxide HCI) exerts its principal effects on certain key areas of the limbic system,” says an ad from the 1970s, showing three monkeys crouching and dangling in cages as assorted experiments are conducted.

An ad for the diet pill Pre-Sate is even worse. It says, “one of the most sophisticated comparative animal studies ever conducted demonstrates direct action on the satiety centers,” and shows five photos of cats in experiments. One shows a life-size white cat looking at the camera with a chain around its neck and invasive instrumentation embedded in its skull.

Today’s consumers, it seems, wouldn’t tolerate ads like these. (Or the experiments behind them.) Why do they tolerate derisive ads about “dog women” and ploys to market pharmaceuticals to kids as if it were candy?

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/153677/4_creepy_ways_big_pharma_peddles_its_drugs?page=entire

« Return to news items

News Feed

Pharmageddon: America’s bitter pill — U.S. is world’s biggest user of psychotropic drugs

admin — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:05:51 +0000

Russia Today – December 27, 2011

The United States has a passion for pills, being the world’s biggest users of psychotropic drugs, consuming 60 per cent of them. And pharmaceutical firms are keen to keep cashing in on the multibillion-dollar market, even if it costs people’s health.

America is regarded as a country with a prodigious appetite for consumption. Today, a widespread fondness for pharmaceuticals has turned the US into a nation of pill-poppers.

With over $14 billion in annual sales, antipsychotics remain the top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the US.

Dr. Harriet Fraad believes Big Pharma has manufactured a climate of insanity by manipulating and even creating illness for capital gain.

“One of the things that drives Big Pharma is to find a diagnosis that is very vague, so that everybody can fall into that,” she told RT. “Everybody is sad sometimes. There are good reasons. The point is to market pharmaceuticals. And the advertising strategy is to have vague diagnosis and then find wiggle room so that they apply to everyone.”

The US is the only Western country that allows direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. For example, an ad for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder warns that untreated patients will likely end up divorced. Another commercial promises to make you happier, but side-effects may include dry mouth, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, diarrhea, nausea and sleepiness.”

Critics also say Big Pharma uses its financial muscle to ply doctors with gifts, cash kick-backs and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs.

Harriet Fraad says there is a whole network of doctors hustling these drugs.

“If a patient comes in with a knee injury and says, ‘I’m so sad.’ Oh, are you depressed? Hey write a prescription! They’re given out like M&Ms.”

Last year, prescription drug abuse became the number one cause of accidental death, with more than 30,000 Americans overdosing.

For instance, Seroquel, medication for bi-polar disorder, generated $4.4 billion in sales last year.Listing all its side-effects requires 49 seconds of air-time.

The number of children consuming antipsychotic medication has doubled in the past decade. Millions of American adolescents are taking drugs like Adderall, doled out by doctors to treat hyperactivity.

Author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic, psychologist Bruce Levine, told RT that, “All these drugs are very similar to illicit or illegal drugs, except they’re more dangerous. Marijuana is a little safer. But kids have no choice.”

Pfizer, America’s most profitable multinational pharmaceutical company makes anti-depressants not only for people, but also for animals. In 2009, the pharmaceutical giant paid $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations over illegally marketing one of its drugs. It was the largest healthcare fraud settlement and criminal fine in US history. That being said, the fine amounted to less than three weeks of Pfizer’s drug sales.

“The money is so huge that the fines are immaterial. They’re not thinking about the social effects of what they’re doing. They’re thinking about the profits they accrue,” says psychotherapist Harriet Fraad.

The pharmaceutical industry remains the most profitable business in the US. More success and financial gain for the companies will always remain possible as long as more Americans are encouraged to take drugs.

http://rt.com/news/us-prescription-drugs-abuse-715/

« Return to news items

News Feed

Time Magazine: Why Are So Many Foster Care Children Taking Antipsychotics?

admin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:06:58 +0000

11/29/2011 by Maia Szalavitz

More than 8% of children in foster care have received antipsychotic medication, and just over one quarter of those in foster care who also receive disability benefits take these drugs, according to a recent studyin the journal Pediatrics.

The question is why? Children in foster care have typically been neglected or abused — indeed, simply removing a young child from his or her parents, even abusive ones, is in itself traumatic — so, not surprisingly, kids in foster care are more likely to suffer from psychiatric and behavioral problems than those who have stable families. Previous data suggest that foster-care children are about twice as likely as those outside the system to receive psychiatric medications.

Whether these problems are leading to higher rates of antipsychotic use, however, is not clear. “I think we have clinicians facing some very challenging situations,” says Susan dosReis, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and lead author of the study. “But we don’t have information as to why the prescribers decided on these medications for [these particular] youths.”

The numbers suggest that the influence of pharmaceutical company marketing cannot be overlooked. Ninety-nine percent of youth receiving antipsychotic medications in the study were given atypical antipsychotics — the newer generation of these drugs, which are expensive and mostly unavailable in generic form and have been heavily advertised.

All of the major manufacturers of these drugs have been fined by the Food and Drug Administration for illegal marketing practices — in part, for marketing the drugs for unapproved use in children — with some convicted of criminal charges.

Eli Lilly, which manufactures the atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa, paid out $1.42 billion in 2009 — $615 million of that to settle criminal charges. The charges against Lilly involved selling Zyprexa to doctors for use in children, despite the fact that it was not approved for this age group.

Bristol Myers Squibb paid $515 million in 2007 to settle charges that it also illegally pushed its antipsychotic Abilify to child psychiatrists. Pfizer paid out $301 million in a similar case related to its drug Geodon. AstraZeneca paid out $520 million to settle charges over the drug Seroquel. In all of these cases, the drugs were sold for unapproved use in youth.

Read the rest of the article here

Watch one foster kid’s story:

« Return to news items

News Feed

Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care

admin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:23:48 +0000

The New York Times, November 20, 2011

by Benedict Carey

Click image to see video on psychiatric drug warnings for kids

Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.

The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs include Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.

“The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author.

The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said.

In recent years, doctors and policy makers have grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents. Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications at about twice the rate among children outside the system.

The new study focused on one of the most powerful classes of drugs, antipsychotics. It found that about 2 percent of foster children took at least one such drug, even though schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which the drugs are approved, are extremely rare in young children.

“It’s a significant and important finding, and it should prompt states to improve the quality of care in this area,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who did not contribute to the research.

In the study, mental health researchers analyzed 2003 Medicaid records of 637,924 minors from an unidentified mid-Atlantic state who were either in foster care, getting disability benefits for a diagnosis like severe autism or bipolar disorder, or in a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. All of these programs draw on Medicaid financing. The investigators found that 16,969, or about 3 percent of the total, had received at least one prescription for an antipsychotic drug.

Yet among these, it was the foster children who most often got more than one such prescription at the same time: 9.2 percent, versus 6.8 percent among the children on disability, and just 2.5 percent of those in the needy families program.

Antipsychotic drugs, the authors said, also cause rapid weight gain and increase the risk for metabolic problems in many people, an effect that may be amplified by the use of two at once.

Doctors who treat such children are aware of the trade-offs and often prescribe lower doses of the medications as a result. And when they add a second such drug, it is often to counteract side effects of the first medication.

read the rest of the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/health/research/study-finds-foster-children-often-given-antipsychosis-drugs.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1321895404-XjlZbL3lXs10CI4v4o6z6w

« Return to news items

News Feed

Hundreds of Soldiers & Vets Dying From Antipsychotic–Seroquel

cchrint — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:43:21 +0000

Market Watch
November 7, 2011

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD & Stan White (Father of Deceased Veteran, Andrew White) disclose the following:

EL CAJON, Calif., Nov. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — As a neurologist who has discovered and described medical diseases, I (Fred A. Baughman) read the May 24, 2008, Charleston (WV) Gazette article “Vets taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder drugs die in sleep,” and opened and financed my own investigation into these unexplained deaths.

Andrew White, Eric Layne, Nicholas Endicott and Derek Johnson, all in their twenties, were four West Virginia veterans who died in their sleep in early 2008. There were no signs of suicide or of a multi-drug “overdose” leading to coma, as claimed by the Inspector General of the VA. All had been diagnosed “PTSD”–a psychological diagnosis, not a disease (physical abnormality) of the brain. All were on the same prescribed drug cocktail, Seroquel (antipsychotic), Paxil (antidepressant) and Klonopin (benzodiazepine) and all appeared “normal” when they went to sleep.

On February 7, 2008, Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker, had announced there had been “a series, a sequence of deaths” in the military suggesting this was “often a consequence of the use of multiple prescription and nonprescription medicines and alcohol.”

However, the deaths of the ‘Charleston Four’ were probable sudden cardiac deaths (SCD), a sudden, pulseless condition leading to brain death in 4-5 minutes, a survival rate or 3-4%, and not allowing time for transfer to a hospital. Conversely, drug-overdose coma is protracted, allowing time for discovery, diagnosis, transport, treatment, and frequently–survival.

Antipsychotics and antidepressants alone or in combination, are known to cause SCD. Sicouri and Antzelevitch (2008) concluded: (1) “A number of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs can increase the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death,” (2)”Antipsychotics can increase cardiac risk even at low doses whereas antidepressants do it generally at high doses or in the setting of drug combinations.”

On April 13, 2009, Baughman wrote the Office of the Surgeon General (OTSGWebPublisher@amedd.army.mil): “On February 7, 2008 the Surgeon General said there had been ‘a series, a sequence of deaths.’ Has the study of these deaths been published?”

On April 17, 2009 the Office of the Surgeon General responded, “The assessment is still pending and has not been released yet.” More than a year later and still no explanation, nor further acknowledgement that these deaths even took place.

In a press release, (PRNewswire, May 19, 2009) Baughman wrote: “I call upon the military for an immediate embargo of all antipsychotics and antidepressants until there has been a complete, wholly public, clarification of the extent and causes of this epidemic of probable sudden cardiac deaths.”

Googling “dead in bed,” “dead in barracks,” by April 16, 2009, veteran’s wife, Diane Vande Burgt, had Googled 74 probable sudden cardiac deaths. By May 2010: 128, and, by November 2, 2011: 247. Two-hundred-forty-seven!

In April 2010 I was in anonymous receipt of an Army National Guard Serious Incident Report for the 5 months 10/03/09 to 3/7/10. In it were 93 “incidents” including 4 “heart attacks,” 6 “cardiac arrests” and 3 “found dead”; 13 of 93 (14%) probable SCDs.

Pfc. Ryan Alderman, was on a cocktail of psych drugs when found unresponsive, dying in his barracks at Ft. Carson, Colo. Sudden cardiac death was confirmed by an ECG done at the scene. Inexplicably, military officials de-classified his death and reversed the cause, calling it instead, a “suicide.”

Again I challenge the military to produce the evidence.

In June 2011, a DoD Health Advisory Group backed a highly questionable policy of “polypharmacy” asserting: “…multiple psychotropic meds may be appropriate in select individuals.” The fact of the matter is that psychotropic drug polypharmacy is never safe, scientific, or medically justifiable. What it is a means of (1) maximizing profit, and (2) making it difficult to impossible to blame adverse effects on any one drug.

From 2001 to the present, US Central Command has given deploying troops 180 day supplies of prescription psychotropic drugs–Seroquel included. In a May 2010 report of its Pain Management Task Force, the Army endorsed Seroquel in 25- or 50-milligram doses as a ‘sleep aid.’

Over the past decade, $717 million was spent for Risperdal and $846 million for Seroquel, for a mind-blowing total of $1.5 billion when neither Risperdal nor Seroquel have been proven safe or effective for PTSD or sleep disorders.

Ironically, yet not surprisingly, pay-to-play in Washington becomes more egregious every day. Heather Bresch, daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, (D-WV) was recently named CEO of WV drug-maker Mylan Inc., that recently contracted with the DoD for over 20 million doses of Seroquel.

Defense Department Health Advisory Group chair, Charles Fogelman, warned: “DoD currently lacks a unified pharmacy database that reflects medication use across pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment settings.” In essence, through a premeditated lack of record keeping, mandated by law at any other pharmacy or medical office to track potential fatal reactions to mixing prescription drugs, the military is willfully preempting all investigations into the injuries and deaths due to psychiatric drugs.

I call on the DoD, VA, House and Senate Armed Services and House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees to tell concerned Americans and the families of fallen heroes what psychiatric drugs each of the deceased, both combat and non-combat, soldiers and veterans were on?

It is time for the military and government to come clean.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hundreds-of-soldiers-vets-dying-from-antipsychotic-seroquel-2011-11-07

« Return to news items

News Feed

Doctors Paid Millions To Promote Drugs and Medical Devices

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:42:12 +0000

InjuryBoard Blog Network – September 29, 2011

AstraZeneca paid one Chicago doctor, Dr. Michael Reinstein nearly half-a-million dollars to promote Seroquel. In return, Dr. Reinstein provided AstraZeneca with a vast customer base.

The Chicago Tribune reportedthat drug companies paid more than $25 million to Illinois doctors to promote and use drugs from the pharmaceutical companies. Nearly 40 physicians got payments and perks exceeding $100,000 between 2009 and early 2011.

Eight drug companies paid more than $220 million to doctors and promotional speakers in 2010 to promote their drugs.

Starting in 2013, all drug and medical device companies must report such information to the federal government which will make these disclosures available to the public.

The most controversial payments involve consulting arrangements and promotional speeches. Drug company officials say they are funding talks that provide much-needed medical education, led by physicians who are experts in their fields. Critics say financial relationship between doctors and drug companies can threaten patient care by influencing physicians to prescribe certain medications whether or not they are the best choice.

Until 2009, drug company payments to doctors and other health professionals were closely held as trade secrets. However, some companies have begun reporting this information in advance of the 2013 requirements and pressure from lawmakers or as a condition of settling federal whistle-blower lawsuits.

ProPublica has created a database called Dollars for Docs identifying amounts paid to doctors for promotion of drugs and medical devices. Dollars for Docs has identified more than $760 million in disclosed marketing payments from only 12 companies between 2009 and the 2nd quarter of 2011.

“[The drug company payments] make it look like physicians are not impartial or are in the service of the drug companies, and can cause patients to wonder if physicians’ recommendations for treatment are being made because it was the best option based on their clinical expertise or because they have a relationship with the company,” [Hastings Center research scholar Josephine] Johnston said. “I don’t think many physicians have taken that risk (of patient distrust) as seriously as they should.”

In 2009, the Chicago Tribune reported on the millions of dollars paid by foreign drug maker AstraZeneca to doctors in order to promote its anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel. AstraZeneca paid one Chicago doctor, Dr. Michael Reinstein nearly half-a-million dollars to promote Seroquel. In return, Dr. Reinstein provided AstraZeneca with a vast customer base.

Dr. Reinstein was traveling the country telling doctors that Seroquel would help patients lose weight while the FDA was warning about Seroquel’s link to weight gain and diabetes. Even Seroquel executives called Dr. Reinstein’s conclusion that patients experienced no adverse side effects “suspect” and “hard to believe”. When faced with the choice of protecting patients or protecting profits, AstraZeneca and Dr. Reinstein chose profits over safety.

Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopaedics division also paid millions — more than $80 million — to surgeons to promote its artificial hip systems. The US Department of Justice brought charges against four medical device companies – including DePuy – in 2007, claiming the companies were using kickbacks to doctors in promoting their products. However, DePuy kept paying doctors:

$48 million to doctors in 2009
$33 million from January to September 2010

Some surgeons received more than $1 million in single year.

These payments create a direct conflict of interest between doctor and patient. Drug company sponsored research potentially taints results and doctors create the impression – and sometimes the actual effect – of choosing profits and drug company kickbacks over patient safety.

Drug companies pay $25 million to Illinois doctors [Deborah L. Shelton at Chicago Tribune]
Doctor-drugmaker ties: Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein received nearly $500,000 from antipsychotic drug’s manufacturer [Christina Jewett and Same Roe at Chicago Tribune]
Dollars for Doctors [ProPublica]

« Return to news items

News Feed

FDA Needs to Ban Antipsychotic Drug Use on Kids

admin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:48:45 +0000

Note from CCHR: While the FDA and its Pediatric advisory panel sit around pondering if one antipsychotic drug is more likely to cause diabetes in children than another while continuing their stall tactic of “let’s study it some more ” routine, we’d like to point out the simple solution: Considering that antipsychotic drugs are already documented by international drug regulatory agencies to cause not only diabetes but obesity, psychosis, blood clots, heart problems, cardiac events, seizures, toxicity, confusion, coma and stroke (and that’s just in kids) as well as brain atrophy (meaning they actually shrink brains); considering there is no medical test to prove any child has a brain malfunction, chemical imbalance or any physical condition requiring the administration of these lethal drugs—and considering these drugs are literally killing kids that have nothing medically wrong with them in the first place— Do the job you are paid by U.S. Taxpayers to do and BAN their use on children. Period.

GAITHERSBURG, Maryland (Reuters) – U.S. pediatric health advisers on Thursday urged drug regulators to continue studying weight gain and other side-effects of antipsychotic drugs as they are increasingly taken by children.

Significant numbers of U.S. children are receiving drugs to tame aggression, attention deficit disorder and other mental problems, even though there is little conclusive data to show exactly how the medications work or whether they damage kids’ health.

Similar to the recommendations the panel has made in previous years, it voted 16-1 to support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s routine safety monitoring of the new generation of antipsychotics.

But the panel did so with a caveat that the agency specifically look at how to clarify the drugs’ labels to highlight concerns about their impact on children, namely the risks of weight gain and diabetes.

“There is serious concern that children may be at a higher risk for serious adverse effects and we just don’t have sufficient data to answer that question,” said Dr. Jonathan Mink, a child neurology expert from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Dr. Jeffrey Wagener, a pediatric pulmonologist from the University of Colorado Medical School, was the one adviser to vote “no” out of concern that wouldn’t get regulators closer to dealing with the risks of using antipsychotics in children.

“I don’t see how the FDA is responding to the December 8, 2009 request by this committee in a thorough fashion,” he said. “It’s taken them two years to not respond to that that we need to be more than in the observational role.”

The FDA in the next month to six weeks will release a revised label for Abilify, a drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Otsuka Pharmaceutical and approved to treat schizophrenia in adolescents, bipolar disorder in children 10 to 17 years old and irritability associated with autism in those as young as six.

“We ask that with this upcoming revision that you carefully consider the language around pediatric use and adverse events,” said Dr. Geoffrey Rosenthal, the committee’s chair and director of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Abilify’s new label will detail the drug’s latest clinical trials, warn of metabolic concerns and remind doctors to monitor weight and symptoms of diabetes in all patients, said Dr. Thomas Laughren, FDA’s psychiatry products chief. The pediatric section of the label would contain a reference to those warnings, he said..

Such revisions, which are already incorporated into Johnson & Johnson’s antipsychotic medication Invega Sustenna, are being considered for other similar drugs on a case by case basis, Laughren said.

The new generation of antipsychotic medications has raised a wave of concerns as they are increasingly being prescribed for a host of uses and for younger and younger patients, with little conclusive research addressing their impact on children and sometimes with little evidence they work.

Newer antipsychotics include J&J’s Risperdal, known generically as risperidone; Eli Lilly & Co’s Zyprexa or olanzapine; AstraZeneca’s Seroquel or quetiapine; and Abilify, known generically as aripiprazole.

U.S. researchers have found that the drugs’ use in children increased by 65 percent from 2002 to 2009, primarily through prescriptions for teenagers.

From fall 2009 to spring of this year, 1.9 million prescriptions of Abilify alone were dispensed to patients under 18, including even 875 prescriptions for toddlers younger than 2, according to FDA research.

Most commonly, the prescriptions were for bipolar disorder in teenagers and preschoolers, and for affective psychoses in children between the ages of seven and 12.

Advisers also voted unanimously to require the FDA to show them label revisions and report back in the next year or 18 months on progress in designing more studies of the drugs in children.

http://www.fox43.com/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-usa-fda-antipsychotictre78l77l-20110922,0,216106.story

« Return to news items

News Feed

Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Aborts Controversial Antipsychotic Drug Trial on Kids Amid Protests

cchrint — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:43:20 +0000

Drug Trial Scrapped Amid Outcry

The Age
By Jill Stark
August 21, 2011

FORMER Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry has aborted a controversial trial of antipsychotic drugs on children as young as 15 who are “at risk” of psychosis, amid complaints the study was unethical.

The Sunday Age can reveal 13 local and international experts lodged a formal complaint calling for the trial not to go ahead due to concerns children who had not yet been diagnosed with a psychotic illness would be unnecessarily given drugs with potentially dangerous side effects.

Quetiapine, sold as Seroquel, has been linked to weight gain and its manufacturer AstraZeneca, which was to fund the trial, last month paid $US647 million ($A623 million) to settle a lawsuit in the US, alleging there was insufficient warning the drug may cause diabetes.

Professor McGorry, one of the Prime Minister’s key mental health advisers, planned to conduct the trial at Orygen Youth Health in Parkville, listing it on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry last March. It was to investigate whether the drug would decrease or delay the risk of people aged between 15 and 40 with early signs of mental illness developing a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.

Last month, psychiatrists, psychologists and researchers from Australia, Britain and the US lodged a complaint with the ethics committee of Melbourne Health, the umbrella health service that includes Orygen.

They argued there was little evidence onset of psychosis can be prevented and it was potentially dangerous to use antipsychotics on people who merely have risk factors for a psychotic illness. They said there was evidence that up to 80 per cent would never develop a disorder.

Professor McGorry insists the decision to scrap the trial was made in June and is unrelated to the complaint, which he said he was only alerted to just over a week ago.

He maintained the trial received ethics approval in July last year but was abandoned due to “feasibility issues” with recruiting participants in European and American sites, which were to form the international arm of the study. He said Orygen had to choose between investing in the drug trial or pursuing another trial using fish oil, which had proven to be useful as an early intervention treatment for schizophrenia in a smaller study. He opted for fish oil because it had less potential for side effects than antipsychotics.

Melbourne Health confirmed the complaint will still be considered by its research ethics committee in September. Yesterday the trial was listed as “prospective” on the clinical trials registry but Professor McGorry said it was being removed.

Earlier this month The Sunday Age revealed a growing backlash against the government’s mental health reforms, with Professor McGorry’s peers claiming his youth early intervention model had been “massively oversold”.

Associate Professor Geoff Stuart of La Trobe University’s school of psychological sciences, who signed the complaint, said questions remained about the trial.

“If these feasibility obstacles can be overcome in future [would] Professor McGorry embark on such a trial again? He was willing to endorse a trial which was exploring the use of antipsychotic medication in an at-risk group. There’s a major ethical issue about medicating four people to supposedly save the fifth when you’re not saving them anyway, you’re just masking their symptoms. We’re talking about kids as young as 15 who could get a full dose of antipsychotics and they’re not psychotic.”

Professor McGorry acknowledged the evidence suggested antipsychotics were not effective as a first-line treatment for the at-risk group. But he said the risks had been exaggerated and he would consider a similar trial on patients for whom other treatments had failed. “I wrote the guidelines which said do not use antipsychotics in ultra-high risk patients, so I’ve never been supportive of it in clinical practice … [but] we should have the freedom to research all available options for this population,” he said.

The controversy over the aborted trial largely centres on “psychosis risk syndrome”, a condition that some mental health advocates want formally recognised. But critics say that could lead to young people being wrongly labelled, stigmatised and medicated for symptoms that may be temporary. They also fear that while Professor McGorry says his Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres prescribe drugs only to those who have experienced a psychotic episode, his willingness to medicate an at-risk group could mean the criteria will broaden. Professor McGorry insists this will not happen.

Early intervention What is it?

EARLY intervention is based on identifying and treating psychosis in its early stages to prevent patients developing full-blown psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.

Patrick McGorry’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres (EPPIC) treat young people who have experienced a psychotic episode with treatments such as psychotherapy, family therapy, medication or a combination. He says early treatment significantly improves the chance of recovery and reduces long-term impairment. But diagnosing psychotic disorders is difficult and McGorry’s critics say there is no reliable diagnostic tool to predict if someone will develop a psychotic illness and there is insufficient evidence intervention can prevent it.

Critics say up to 80 per cent of those with ”psychosis risk syndrome” – which refers to people who only have risk factors such as a family history or a deterioration in mental health – never develop an illness. They fear early intervention will lead to many patients being wrongly labelled as psychotic and medicated unnecessarily.

A recently released literature review by The Cochrane Collaboration found there was insufficient evidence that early intervention could prevent psychosis and that any benefits were not long term. Professor McGorry said it used flawed methodology.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/drug-trial-scrapped-amid-outcry-20110820-1j3vy.html?from=age_sb

August 21, 2011

« Return to news items

News Feed

According to Psycho/Pharma—1 In 66 Americans Is A Psycho

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:09:37 +0000

Business Insider – July 20, 2011

by Robert Johnson

Image: wikipedia commons

Outselling even common drugs to treat high blood pressure and acid reflux, antipsychotic medications are the single top-selling prescription drug in the United States.

Once reserved for hard-core, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest type of mental illnesses to treat hallucinations, delusions or major thought disorders; today, the drugs are handed out to unruly kids and absent minded elderly.

A recent story in Al Jazeera by James Ridgeway of Mother Jones illuminates the efforts by major pharmaceutical companies to get doctors prescribing medicines like Zyprexa, Seroquel, and Abilify to patients for whom the drugs were never intended.

Focusing on psychiatrists because they rely on subjective diagnoses, the drug reps have been so successful that they’ve changed the criteria for mental illness and disability payments. Ridgeway quotes former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell.

“[T]he tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007 – from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. For children, the rise is even more startling – a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades. Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children.” Under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are “simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one.” Fugh-Berman agrees: In the age of aggressive drug marketing, she says, “Psychiatric diagnoses have expanded to include many perfectly normal people.”

Particularly vulnerable because medication decisions are often out of their hands the old and the young suffer most.

For kids: the number diagnosed with bi-polar disorder rose 40-fold between 1994 and 2003 and one in five comes away from a psychiatrist with a prescription for an antipsychotic.

Dosing the elderly at nursing homes has become so common that sales reps have coined the term “five at five” — meaning 5 milligrams of Zyprexa at 5 pm to sedate difficult residents.

For all their nefarious wrangling, in 2009, Lily agreed to pay $1.4 billion, including a $515 million criminal fine. The largest ever in a health care case and the largest criminal fine on any corporation in the U.S.

That year, Lilly sold $1.8 billion of Zyprexa alone.

http://www.businessinsider.com/zyprexa-antipsycotics-top-selling-drugs-in-us-2011-7

« Return to news items

News Feed

CCHR International » Seroquel

Grassley & Senate Watchdog Target Doctors Prescribing Mass Amounts of Dangerous Drugs

An influential U.S. senator is grilling officials in nearly three-dozen states, demanding to know how they are cracking down on physicians who prescribe massive amounts of potentially dangerous prescription drugs.

Related Posts

4 Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs

Big Pharma uses ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and sell diseases to adults and their children.

Related Posts

Pharmageddon: America’s bitter pill — U.S. is world’s biggest user of psychotropic drugs

Related Posts

Time Magazine: Why Are So Many Foster Care Children Taking Antipsychotics?

Related Posts

Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care

Related Posts

Hundreds of Soldiers & Vets Dying From Antipsychotic–Seroquel

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD & Stan White (Father of Deceased Veteran, Andrew White) disclose the following:

Related Posts

Doctors Paid Millions To Promote Drugs and Medical Devices

Related Posts

FDA Needs to Ban Antipsychotic Drug Use on Kids

Related Posts

Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Aborts Controversial Antipsychotic Drug Trial on Kids Amid Protests

Related Posts

According to Psycho/Pharma—1 In 66 Americans Is A Psycho

Related Posts