The maker of Zoloft is being sued in an unusual case alleging the popular antidepressant has no more benefit than a dummy pill and that patients who took it should be reimbursed for their costs.
“We estimate there are more than 200 children across Canada who were born with cardiovascular defects because their mothers were on Paxil during pregnancy,” said David Klein, one of the lawyers representing Gibson. “The information from GlaxoSmithKline was totally inadequate with respect to using the drug while pregnant.”
Following a year in the cross-hairs of state officials critical of its controversial electric-shock methods, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton is on the defensive again, this time fighting off a civil lawsuit in Norfolk Superior Court that has quickly attracted national and international media coverage. Andre McCollins, now 26, and his mother, Cheryl McCollins of Brooklyn, N.Y., is the plaintiff in the negligence lawsuit against the Rotenberg Center and three of its psychologists. The lawsuit says that in 2002 Andre received 30 electric shocks over a seven-hour period while he was also restrained face-down.
What irony. Detroit mother, Maryanne Godboldo, was just charged with child neglect for refusing to obey a Child Protective Services order to give her daughter Risperdal, a powerful psychoactive drug. Meanwhile federal and multiple state prosecutors are suing Johnson & Johnson for deceptively marketing the drug – including mismarketing its use on children – and hiding dangerous adverse effects. J&J now faces a potential $1 billion in damages.
Having earlier observed the drug’s dreadful effects on her child, Maryanne was correctly pursuing holistic treatment for the child instead when the legal battle began. The jury’s ruling, now handed down against the mother, is not only a travesty of justice, but a reflection of psychopharma’s vast propaganda machine.
California has joined a whistleblower lawsuit that claims Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. bribed doctors to prescribe its drugs, costing insurers perhaps millions of dollars in the largest alleged health care fraud case ever handled by the state, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced Friday. The suit claims company salespeople plied physicians with speaking fees, expensive meals, gifts and trips to induce or reward them for prescribing large amounts of its drugs, which were billed to private insurers.
For example, the company invited doctors to attend Los Angeles Lakers games at Staples Center and spent thousands of dollars on luxury suites, the suit claimed.
“Golf outings, basketball camps, samba lessons, you name it,” Jones said at a news conference. The lawsuit said the aim was to boost prescription levels for legally approved and so-called “off-label” uses of drugs ranging from the antipsychotic Abilify to the blood thinner Plavix.