Two years ago, drugmaker Eli Lilly pleaded guilty to illegally marketing its blockbuster antipsychotic Zyprexa for elderly patients. Lilly paid $1.4 billion in criminal penalties and settlements in four civil lawsuits. But a doctor named as a co-defendant in one suit – for allegedly taking kickbacks to prescribe the drug extensively at nursing homes – never was pursued.
A report by the Financial Times has claimed a group of pharmaceutical companies has paid doctors in the US almost $150m so far during 2011.
Prepared in conjunction with the data provider, PharmaShine, the figures show the money was paid by pharmaceutical firms, including Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca (AZ) and Pfizer, for doctors’ travel and entertainment expenses as well as education and consultancy fees.
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. National Institutes of Health revised on Tuesday its 16-year-old conflict of interest rules for medical researchers, lowering the amount of money that constitutes a financial conflict and expanding the required disclosures….Concern about the integrity of research in the United States has grown since 2008, when Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley criticized prominent Harvard University psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman and others for failing to fully disclose payments from drug companies.
There is a good chance you have heard the story of Maryanne Godboldo and how armed government agents broke down her door and attempted to kidnap her 13-year-old daughter Ariana to turn over to CPS because she refused to medicate her with a potentially dangerous and mind-altering anti-psychotic drug Risperdal (http://www.naturalnews.com/032191_C…). Maryanne had been using holistic remedies for her daughter instead, such as dance therapy.
The Detroit mother is now currently going through a criminal and custody trial because of this incident, and a variety of revealing and disturbing information is starting to come out about the involvement of Big Pharma and other parties in the twisted web of lies the case is wrapped in.
The jury presiding over the hearing was convinced to believe that Maryanne’s refusal to give her daughter the controversial drug, supposedly used to “treat” ADHD, represented a form of parental neglect. Thanks to the Voice of Detroit (VOD), it is now coming to light that the New Oakland Child-Adolescent & Family Center – a private facility which reported Maryanne to CPS for taking her daughter off the drug — has paid connections with Big Pharma since at least 2004.
Sen. Chuck Grassley warned the administration not to back off from a proposed rule that would create a website to disclose medical researchers’ conflicts of interest. “I am troubled that taxpayers cannot learn about the outside income of the researchers whom the taxpayers are funding, and this flies in the face of President Obama’s call for more transparency in the government. The public’s business should be public.