Tag Archives: Drug companies

Depression as a mass marketing campaign: Drug companies profit as antidepressant prescriptions increase

Dr. Brad Hagen, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at the University of Lethbridge, the reason for the skyrocketing rates of depression are a matter of heated debate. “Depending on how you look at it, depression either started becoming more common or recognized, or it became marketed,” says Hagen. Sales of antidepressant drugs worldwide are in the tens of billions of dollars each year. Dr. Hagen says the number of sales is actually quite “mindboggling.”

Sen. Grassley’s bill requires disclosure of Pharma $ to doctors, ghost writers & “patient advocacy” groups like NAMI

Bipartisan legislation sponsored by Grassley to require drug, device and biologic manufacturers to report quarterly to the Department of Health and Human Services payments to physicians is part of the health care reform bill passed by the Senate Committee on Finance. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, S.301, would establish the first-ever nationwide requirement for this information to be reported and made publicly available.

How Pharma Can Skew Drug Trial Results: If patients taking a drug die, study may include only those that survived

Drug companies sidestep rules and hide test results, according to researchers in Canada, France and Britain. David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute said that there are two ways to let bias creep into a study: 1) decide the study doesn’t show what a drug company wanted to illustrate, and hide the whole thing, or 2) play up the good news in study findings while concealing the bad, known as “outcome reporting bias.”

Shrinks for sale: Psychiatrist makes $22,500 in 3 months doing “educational” drug speeches for Eli Lilly

Lilly last month disclosed its $22 million in payments in the first quarter of this year to the 3,400 doctors who are called the Lilly faculty. The company paid a $1.4 billion penalty as part of its January settlement with the government. That amount was dwarfed by Pfizer’s $2.3 billion settlement on Sept. 2 for similar violations, which also requires disclosing physician speaking fees. Both cases centered on company actions that illegally promoted drugs for “off-label” uses, those not approved by federal officials.