Tag Archives: antidepressants

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

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.

Drug Industry’s Boast of Ethics Rings Hollow

Russell Williams, president of Canada’s Pharmaceutical Companies, recently wrote an opinion piece criticizing a series of articles that I wrote on antidepressants. His article was headlined: “Drug industry ethical standards high.”

Curiously, Williams did not address my concern that a review from the United States Food and Drug Administration found that antidepressants not only have no benefit in children, but are associated with a 50 per cent increase in suicidal behaviour.

Drug Industry’s Boast of Ethics Rings Hollow

Russell Williams, president of Canada’s Pharmaceutical Companies, recently wrote an opinion piece criticizing a series of articles that I wrote on antidepressants. His article was headlined: “Drug industry ethical standards high.”

Curiously, Williams did not address my concern that a review from the United States Food and Drug Administration found that antidepressants not only have no benefit in children, but are associated with a 50 per cent increase in suicidal behaviour.

Psychotropic Drugs, Our Children and Our Pill-Crazed Society

Today, the use of psychoactive drugs by children (6-17) is all too common, relied on far too much and growing at an alarming rate. It all started in the ’70s. Memorialized in 1966 by the Rolling Stones’ “Mothers Little Helpers,” it was at that time that our society took the first steps at becoming “Pill Crazy.”

Americans drowning in prescription drugs

Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released (1). Nearly a third of Americans use two or more drugs, and more than one in ten use five or more prescription drugs regularly.The report also revealed that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs, and nine out of ten seniors are on drugs. All these drugs came at a cost of over $234 billion in 2008. The most commonly-used drugs were:
• Statin drugs for older people
• Asthma drugs for children
• Antidepressants for middle-aged people
• Amphetamine stimulants for children