tagged w/ Pharmaceuticals
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Suffering from cancer, and sickened by opium based pharmaceuticals, talks about his medical marijuana needs.Suffering from cancer, and sickened by opium based pharmaceuticals, talks about his... more
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Jenime
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13 hours ago
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Nov 13 2009
DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowa will recoup $4.3 million from pharmaceutical companies that overcharged for medications.
Attorney General Tom Miller said Friday that eight of the 78 companies sued by Iowa in federal court have settled. Lawyers fees and the federal government's take of the settlement means the state will get $1.2 million.
The lawsuit, filed in 2007, alleged the drug companies intentionally deceived Iowa's Medicaid program, which pays for medical care and drugs for the elderly and poor.
The lawsuit, combined with thosed filed by more than 20 other states, claimed breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment and violations of federal Medicaid laws and the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
Miller says he hopes more drug companies will settle. If not, the case will go to trial in Massachusetts next year.Nov 13 2009
DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowa will recoup $4.3 million from pharmaceutical... more
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TALLAHASSEE -- A task force investigating the apparent suicide of a 7-year-old foster child approved a list of nearly 100 recommendations concerning the use of psychiatric medications by foster children Thursday as the examination of the hanging death of Gabriel Myers continues.
The panel called for several measures to toughen accountability in the dispensing of psychotropic drugs and making sure the medications aren't the only part of a child's therapy.
Members of the working group also called for the Legislature to devote more resources, including the creation of a chief medical officer for the Department of Children & Families, to keep an eye on treatment for foster children.
"We need to have a better system of accountability over children who are being taken care of," said Jim Sewell, former assistant commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and head of the task force. "... If we're serious about making sure we're taking care of children, we've got to make sure that we're devoting funding to it."
The recommendations include calling for tighter oversight by local DCF workers of the nonprofit organizations that handle foster care services and increased scrutiny from the agency's central office. The panel also suggests making sure that caseworkers and caregivers get second opinions for the use of certain types and frequencies of medications.
Sewell said the panel's recommendations, which are being put into final form after an hours-long meeting Thursday to hammer out the details, focus less on whether the psychiatric medications are over-prescribed than whether they are "properly prescribed."
"We don't say the drugs are completely bad," Sewell said. "Medications are useful ... when they're part of dealing with the child's overall issues."
But Sewell said part of the solution is making sure the department employees follow existing laws and rules.
"The framework's in place," he said.
The use of the drugs and whether the agency was obtaining proper consent from parents or courts entered the spotlight when, in the aftermath of Gabriel's death, the department revealed that more than 3,000 foster kids were taking the medications without the legally required permission.
While the major recommendations for the Legislature involve what Sewell described as "tweaks" to the law and more resources for monitoring the use of the drugs, lawmakers are likely to more closely examine the use of psychiatric medications for foster children.
Members of the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee from both parties pledged this month to toughen laws and rules for prescribing psychiatric drugs to children in the wake of Gabriel's death.
"We've got a lot deeper issues than the medical director," Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville and a member of the committee, said Thursday.
He said lawmakers could move around funding to provide the necessary money for things like the medical position, but also wanted assurances that there would be accountability for failures like Gabriel's death.
"We need to find out what the department is going to do about this to makes sure there won't be another Gabriel Myers situation down the line," Hill said.
http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2009-11-13/story/florida_panel_wants_tougher_rules_on_drugs_for_foster_kidsTALLAHASSEE -- A task force investigating the apparent suicide of a 7-year-old foster... more
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A group of young Colombian student chefs have unveiled a new dessert made from passion fruit and Viagra, claiming it had aphrodisiac effects on everybody who has tried it.
"We got the idea four months ago when we were dealing with a nutrition project for older people," Juan Sebastian Gomez said at an international gastronomy fair on Thursday.
"It occurred to us that we could use passion fruit, with all its connotations.. and Viagra, and we came up with this dessert," added Gomez, who along with his three colleagues is studying the culinary arts at a national college.
Gomez said the new dessert was tried on a group of volunteers.
"It's really an aphrodisiac. By trial and error we found out it works. We gave it to a group without telling them it contained Viagra. A second group was in the know and both experienced heightened libido," he said.
"They felt their bodies' need to quench that desire," he added.
The young chef said women have been the most enthusiastic about the desert.
"They eat slowly, savoring every little spoonful. They take very small portions and after a few minutes begin to smile and confess that they feel delicious little tickles," he said.
"We know it's an innovative idea that might seem crazy to some, but it's having success. Since it contains a medication, it requires delicate handling but we have always had medical and scientific accompaniment."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.eeb6c45b6dc19e6ad8bc41f6ac1c9022.181&show_article=1A group of young Colombian student chefs have unveiled a new dessert made from passion... more
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Published on Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Reuters
Report Shows Pfizer Fudged Drug Studies
by Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO - A study of internal company documents suggests Pfizer Inc altered or omitted unfavorable study findings to expand its epilepsy drug Neurontin's market, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday, offering a look at how drugmakers influence scientific research.
Clinical trials are supposed to answer a specific, predetermined scientific question, but a comparison of Pfizer documents and published studies on Neurontin for conditions other than epilepsy found that eight out of 20 study reports never made it into medical journals.
And in eight of the 12 published studies, the primary outcome -- the answer to the main scientific question -- was changed by Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, from the original study design.
"There were a lot of primary outcomes that were shifted around between the planning of the protocol and the reporting of the study," said Kay Dickersin of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, whose study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Some primary outcomes were lost altogether. Some were brand new. Some were secondary outcomes that were upgraded to primary," she said in a telephone interview.
The studies, all funded by Pfizer, showed how the drug worked in people with problems like migraines or pain, which are off-label uses of the drug.
Once a drug is approved, doctors are free to prescribe it as they see fit, and while companies are not permitted to market a drug for anything but the approved use, they can hand out reprints of studies published in medical journals showing how the drugs work in patients with different problems.
Dickersin got the documents while serving as an expert witness against Pfizer, which in 2004 paid $430 million to settle a lawsuit over illegal promotion of Neurontin.
Pfizer was sued again last year by lawyer Thomas Greene, who brought the original case against the company for off-label marketing practices, for holding back negative study results and changing the design of its trials to produce more favorable results.
That case was the latest in a string of allegations against the pharmaceutical industry suggesting it has controlled the flow of clinical trial research to boost its marketing position.
Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder said in a statement the suggestion that the company attempted to mislead the medical community is untrue and was "derived from a report created for litigation and coauthored by plaintiffs' expert witness."
Dickersin said the studies she reviewed are still not publicly available.
She said while there can be legitimate reasons to change a study's primary goal or endpoint, that change needs to be included in a formal amendment and published in a journal.
Not taking that step leaves a false impression, and in the case of companies, reveals the competing interests of scientists and marketing departments, she said.
To improve transparency, Dickersin said study protocols and primary endpoints should be required when companies register their clinical trials on the public database clinicaltrials.gov.
"It's important for us not to give up on trying to understand this because if we don't, the truth of science will not be upheld," she said.
(Editing by Philip Barbara)
© 2009 ReutersPublished on Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Reuters
Report Shows Pfizer Fudged Drug... more
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In 2004, lawyers for Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, promised it wouldn’t break the law again. The attorneys were negotiating with federal prosecutors over charges that the corporation had been engaging in health-care fraud. But Bloomberg news now reports that Pfizer managers were breaking that promise even before the ink was dry on their plea.In 2004, lawyers for Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, promised it... more
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There were plenty of cowardly votes in the House last night but there was only one truly brave one. The unsung hero of the night was Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. Despite enormous pressure to support H.R. 3962, Rep. Kucinich did the right thing and voted 'no'. Unlike the Blue Dog votes against the bill, he did it for all the right reasons.
In a principled and practical statement, Rep. Kucinich said what a growing number of progressives have realized as we've watched real health care reform be compromised again and again.
During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The "robust public option" which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.
Personally, I supported President Obama in the primaries and the election but do not support him on this corporate giveaway built on broken campaign promises. I voted for the Barack Obama who opposed the individual mandate, who said the negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and who campaigned against backroom deals with PhARMA.
Conservatives have expressed outrage for months about the way the health care bill was handled. Their anti-government anger is misplaced because the lets the insurances and drug companies who really helped drive this bill off the hook. But I understand their sense that this bill was passed despite the people. [cont'd at link]There were plenty of cowardly votes in the House last night but there was only one... more
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asherp
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6 days ago
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2009-11-09 08:27:50
One Found Guilty and One a Suspect for Murder and Both Under Psychiatric Care and on Psychotropic Medication
The Orlando Shooter Jason Rodriguez was on psychotropic medication, and Michele Kehoe found guilty of first degree murder for killing her son and has been on Paxil and other medications since 1996.
This is another example of psychiatrists for the defense with one analysis and others for the prosecution having an opposite analysis on the same case. It is evidence that Psychiatry is not a science but opinion, and lack of consensus on how the mind works. The only idea they appear to agree on is to push psychotropic drugs and take no responsibility for the disastrous results. Every time you hear of news reports of mass killings or suicide you will find psychotropic drugs involved. The psychotropic drug aspects of these murders will not be broadcast by the media, and the government and FDA will take no action. The media needs the pharmaceutical advertising, so they will find other reasons for these murders and suicides except the obvious. The FDA is run by psychiatry and the pharmaceutical companies, and they are not even embarrassed by the results. The public needs to wake up and said enough is enough. There is an enormous amount of evidence which indicates that psychotropic drugs are directly related to aggressive behavior, and cause more depression then they will ever relieve.
Read More...
http://www.pr-inside.com/one-found-guilty-and-one-a-r1571032.htm2009-11-09 08:27:50
One Found Guilty and One a Suspect for Murder and Both Under... more
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Most people (including Members of Congress and the press) won’t read the nearly 2,000-page healthcare bill (“Affordable Health Care for America Act”: H.R. 3962). Consequently, like most Americans, they are oblivious to the elephant in the living room that’s about to transform the nation. While legislators shadow-box over public-versus-private options, trillion-dollar debts, and socialized medicine, tucked away in the bill under warm and fuzzy labels are numerous sops to the mental-health industry.
If enacted, these will serve to prop up an already misrepresented collection of disorders and channel ever-more-billions into the psycho-pharmaceutical industry that could be better directed toward research for cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other known, physical ailments that cost families a fortune and send their victims to gruesome, painful deaths.
Worse, however, is what this bill will do to America as a constitutional republic — and indeed what is left of the entire free world, since no doubt it will follow the United States’ lead. With legal legitimacy for unprovable mental disorders will come, inevitably, an excuse to marginalize individuals on the basis of conscience, outspokenness, and politics. Thus far, the United States has been among the few countries to dodge that particular bullet — even though we have been moving ever-closer for 40 years to that outcome via draconian measures aimed at instituting political correctness. But this bill will send the issue over the edge and discourage anyone from honest exchanges of ideas.
Most Members of Congress, unfortunately, rely on youngish aides to provide synopses of a bill’s provisions. Elected politicians, most of whom know little about medicine anyway, can hardly be expected to read and analyze a document that exceeds the size of War and Peace in the space of a few days, complete with technical and legal jargon. Their aides, unfortunately, are mostly products of a failed and politicized education system that has spent some four decades skipping over the particulars of our Constitution and the related debates of its Framers. So, to expect such individuals to catch mistakes that might compromise the health of the republic, not to mention the physical health of the populace, is wishful thinking.
Let us examine, then, some of the key components of this House bill that serve to sustain and support an already out-of-control mental-health, quasi-political industry.
Read More...
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/2246-the-healthcare-bills-sops-to-the-mental-health-industryMost people (including Members of Congress and the press) won’t read the nearly... more
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Think the House health care reform bill's too long? Not after the Senate whittles away at it.
The thing to worry about the House health reform bill isn't what the Senate will add but what it will take away.
http://www.slate.com/id/2234864/Think the House health care reform bill's too long? Not after the Senate whittles away... more
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How do you keep the pharmaceutical and medical industries rolling in profits? Well, you use organinizations like WHO and FAO to cut nutrient guidelines to keep people ill. And you then support companies like Monsanto in owning your seeds, and not allowing you to save them.How do you keep the pharmaceutical and medical industries rolling in profits? Well,... more
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Med students have gone to Congress to plead with them to stop provisions in health care legislation that would outlaw affordable generic drugs for the sake of protecting corporate competition. They have seen first hand how people suffer and die because of the inability to obtain life saving drugs, a painful, slow, horrible death for many. This is sadistic. Sign the petition to help.
http://publicoptionplease.com/biologics/petition/Med students have gone to Congress to plead with them to stop provisions in health... more
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OLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina's attorney general said Friday the state has reached a $45 million settlement with drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. over the company's marketing of an anti-psychotic drug, an agreement the drug maker said was its largest with a single state over Zyprexa.
"This is a victory for South Carolina's taxpayers who were forced to bear the financial costs of Eli Lilly's unlawful conduct," Henry McMaster said. "Our case was sound. The evidence we presented was overwhelming. And I am pleased to say justice has been served."
In 2007, McMaster filed a lawsuit against Lilly, arguing that the Indiana-based drug maker had improperly marketed Zyprexa for off-label uses. The Food and Drug Administration has approved it to treat schizophrenia and certain types of bipolar disorder.
McMaster claimed the company also pushed doctors to prescribe the drug for other ailments including dementia and attention-deficit disorder without warning of possible side effects like heart problems, weight gain and diabetes.
In his lawsuit, McMaster argued that the drug maker should reimburse South Carolina's Medicaid and state health plan for the tens of millions of dollars it had spent to treat those side effects for nearly 64,000 patients from 1996 to 2007, as well as money the state spent to buy the prescriptions.
McMaster says the settlement is second in South Carolina history only to the 1998 agreement by tobacco companies to pay 46 states, including South Carolina, more than $200 billion over several decades. Instead of waiting years for payments expected to total $3.2 billion, state lawmakers in 2001 borrowed against the settlement to raise more than $900 million.
Attorneys general in 44 other states have sued Lilly over Zyprexa, but the $45 million agreement is the largest a single state has reached with the drug maker, company spokeswoman Marni Lemons said.
"We're glad to put the issue behind us and think it's in the best interests of not only Lilly but of patients, care givers, health care professionals and those who continue to rely on Zyprexa, which is a life-saving medication," she said.
The next-highest single-state Zyprexa settlement was with Connecticut, for $30 million, Lemons said. In its third-quarter earnings statement released Wednesday, the company said it was in "advanced discussions" with the six remaining states with which it has open Zyprexa cases.
In January, Lilly pleaded guilty to illegally marketing Zyprexa, agreeing to pay a combined $1.42 billion to settle civil suits with several states and end a criminal investigation. Lilly also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act violation for promoting the drug as a dementia treatment.
Zyprexa, approved in 1996, is Lilly's top seller, bringing in $1.2 billion in the third quarter, 3 percent more than it did the same quarter last year. But a year ago, Lilly lost $465.6 million, or 43 cents per share, after setting aside almost $1.5 billion to settle the off-label marketing investigations.
As part of the settlement agreement, Eli Lilly is required to refrain from making misleading claims regarding Zyprexa and require medical — and not marketing — staff to approve references to the drug.OLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina's attorney general said Friday the state has reached... more
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With large firms seeking synergies to drive down R&D costs, M&A deals can aid in the transfer of technical knowledge, scalability and reduce time to market. However, previous M&A periods have not alleviated the productivity crisis. While short term gains emerge from these deals, in the mid to long term, R&D innovation, organic growth, and internal drivers are still key facet’s behind creating a successful company and providing an organization with sustainability.
The debate rages on at the NGP Summit (currently being held in Florida) where visionaries such as Jeffery Nye, Chief Medical Officer at Johnson & Johnson, Reinilde Heyrman—VP of Clinical Development at Daiichi Sankyo, Oscar Laskin—VP of Early Development at Celgene are leading the debate, joined by Ann Wang—VP of Clinical Operations at Human Genome Sciences who have recently seen a surge of 277 % in their stock price owing to the continuing success of their ‘Benlysta’ drug.
The NGP Summit clearly illustrates that the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry is in a state of transition. M&A, reorganization, consolidation, and portfolio changes are being evaluated in order to maintain growth centers in the face of a myriad of serious challenges. Companies such as Millipore, Definiens and PPD were called by the committee to share their thought leadership amongst over fifty of the worlds ‘big Pharma’ leaders.
“The willingness for the industry to unite in such a way clearly demonstrates long-term strategies for improved business processes so long-term investment in R&D can be secured”. Drew Contessa – NGP Director
Various economic pressures have triggered yet another wave in M&A deals in the industry as companies seek to bring in new assets, capabilities and infrastructures and redesign their organizations going forward. But is this sustainable for long-term growth? The fifty strong committee are set to rejoin at the NGP in April 2010 to review.With large firms seeking synergies to drive down R&D costs, M&A deals can aid in the... more
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http://www.bodbeat.com Statin Drugs, Insulin, Pharmeceuticals. The drugs are getting more advanced and more popular .. and yet we're getting sicker. What's the answer? Dr. Loretta shows you 6 key changes you can make that will change your life.http://www.bodbeat.com Statin Drugs, Insulin, Pharmeceuticals. The drugs are... more
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FDA fails to follow up after finding that many cancer medications have failed to extend patients lives, no follow up testing has been done, and in some cases is decades over due.
A report due out today from the Government Accountability Office also shows that the FDA has never pulled a drug off the market due to a lack of required follow-up about its actual benefits - even when such information is more than a decade overdue.
The drug company are so bluntly corrupt they they don't even care if the dangerous chemotherapy drugs even work?
I know you are tempted but do not loss hope.....all is not lost...FDA fails to follow up after finding that many cancer medications have failed to... more
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For a handful of drug makers, including the Novartis AG vaccine division in Cambridge, the global effort to combat the swine flu is turning out to be good business, bringing them a $7 billion windfall.
The race to produce the H1N1 vaccine, at the urging of the World Health Organization and governments here and abroad, has strained supply chains and forced manufacturers to untangle production snags. That has led to supply shortages and delays in shipping the medicine to clinics and other health care providers.
But the urgency also has taught the companies valuable lessons about handling pandemics; helped them hone emergency response programs; and fueled new research, acquisitions, and investments in vaccines for viruses and infections ranging from hepatitis to meningitis.
That will benefit them long after the H1N1 alert is over. The global market for vaccines is projected to more than double from $16 billion in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, to $35 billion in 2014, according to Cambridge consulting firm Scientia Advisors.
“With a pandemic like this, the upside for us is clearly significant,’’ said Andrin Oswald, chief executive of Cambridge-based Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, a unit of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. “The quicker we can ramp up our volume, the better it will be for people in the United States and around the world.’’
Novartis and four other drug makers - Sanofi-aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, CSL Limited, and MedImmune - heeded the call to action by health officials when swine flu was identified last spring.
They quickly accelerated production of seasonal flu vaccine to free up capacity to make H1N1 vaccine, revamping their distribution systems and wrestling with low “yields’’ of inactivated virus strains in their egg-based swine flu vaccine production system. Shipments began last month and are expected to continue into next year.
Novartis expects to generate $900 million in the US and $1.2 billion worldwide from swine flu vaccine orders. That represents a small fraction of the $40 billion the company rings up annually in global biopharmaceutical sales, but it’s a big revenue boost for its vaccine division, which reported $1.7 billion in sales for 2008.For a handful of drug makers, including the Novartis AG vaccine division in Cambridge,... more
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liviu
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24 days ago
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Researchers have found a pharmaceutical way to clear some of the cognitive fog that results from a sleepless night. In a new study using lab mice, researchers corrected the memory problems in sleep-deprived mice through a drug that suppressed levels of a certain enzyme in a brain region called the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory and learning.
The study, published in Nature, helps tease out the specific effects of sleep deprivation on the brain. Says lead researcher Christopher Vecsey: “One of the main problems is that sleep deprivation does a lot of things to the brain, and it’s easy to get caught in a mish-mash of different effects” [Nature News].
In the experiment, two groups of mice were either allowed to rest over a five-hour period or were constantly disturbed by handling. The sleep-deprived group demonstrated particular problems when it came to performing a basic retrieval test, which they had learned before [BBC News]. When the researchers examined the brains of the sleep-deprived mice, they found that these mice made more of an enzyme called phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4). In turn, the surplus of PDE4 caused a shortfall of a compound called cAMP, which is involved in forming new memories in a brain area called the hippocampus [WebMD]. When the researchers gave sleep-deprived mice a drug that stops PDE4 from working, the mice aced their memory tests.
While the study appears to point the way toward drugs that could help out sleep-deprived humans, overworked and overstressed people shouldn’t be clamoring for a prescription, says sleep specialist Neil Stanley, who wasn’t involved in the research. “We are always going to need drugs for people with serious disorders, but we don’t want to end up medicalising lifestyles. We need to go back to basics and think about the way we as a society lead our lives, and the impact this has on our sleep, rather than looking for a cure” [BBC News].Researchers have found a pharmaceutical way to clear some of the cognitive fog that... more
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