Re: Re: Busting Big Pharma

[Guest guest]

is the big guy from Flint, MI. His first movie was about General

Motors and . He also did a movie about Columbine.

Kathy

[Guest guest]

is the big guy from Flint, MI. His first movie was about General

Motors and . He also did a movie about Columbine.

Kathy

[Guest guest]

is a movie producer that has also written several books and

had a TV show. His stuff is social reform in nature, he is very liberal.

Bowling for Columbine is his movie, it had some good points but I was

appalled at his treatment of NRA frontman Charlton Heston in that movie.

He wrote a book Dude Where's My Country? that goes over the Patriot Act and

scared the crap out of me with that destruction of liberty legislation.

He uses press for most of his research which is rather shoddy researching in

my opinion

but over all say some important things to say. His 911 movie was supposed to

unseat

Bush's re-election and was supressed by the book company who was supposed to

publish it. Librarians found out about it and raised such a stink that it

was published eventually.

You can look him up on www.amazon.com or www.imdb.com for books and movies

respectively.

Who is Micheal ?

Is he the big guy with the beard that just recently did a movie

involving politics. Who made a mochery of the Republican party and

their issues? At the bottom of this post, it says that he is now

pointing a camera at Big Pharma. I would pay good money to see this

one. I can't wait. What a way to expose the injustices going on in

our counry. I love this man. It seems that American's don't believe

anything unless it's on the t.v. screen.

Wake up America,

Connie

>

>

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,1170159

5%5E28737,00.html

>

> Busting Big Pharma

> Lusetich

> December 16, 2004

> WHAT happens when a slick sales force of 87,000 is set loose with

billions of dollars to wine and dine, entertain and educate the US's

600,000 doctors?

>

> The short answer is that six years ago Americans spent $US89

billion on prescription drugs. Last year the amount exploded to

$US149 billion. In the year to March 2004, Australia spent $5.8

billion on prescription drugs.

>

> The US accounts for half of all global profits for Big Pharma, as

the pharmaceutical corporations are known.

>

> " The result of all those attractive women in short skirts armed

with pseudo-science invading the practices of doctors is that

Americans are over-medicated, taking far too many drugs, most of

which they don't even need, and they are paying too much for them, "

says Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of

Medicine and prominent critic of Big Pharma.

>

> Beyond the skyrocketing profits, however, lies a darker picture of

a virtually unregulated omnipotent industry whose questionable

practices - some call them criminal - in the quest for higher

revenues has turned Big Pharma into the latest corporate villain.

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> As a growing army of critics - and the courts - fling open the

doors of the world's leading drug companies to reveal unfavourable

buried studies, the parallels to Big Oil, Big Banking and, the most

notorious of all, Big Tobacco are striking.

>

> " These guys and their ethics are precisely where Big Tobacco was

20 years ago, " says Breggin, a prominent New York psychiatrist

who has campaigned against the spread of controversial

antidepressants.

>

> Scandals, such as US pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co yanking its

$US2.5billion ($3.3 billion) a year blockbuster painkiller Vioxx off

the market on September 30 after the company belatedly conceded it

was causing heart attacks and strokes, have led to an unprecedented

erosion in public trust.

>

> In the past year 300,000 Australians - about one-third of patients

suffering osteoarthritis - used Vioxx. Since its September

withdrawal more than 600 Australians who suffered heart attacks,

strokes and blood-related illnesses after taking the drug have

joined a multi-billion-dollar class action against Merck.

>

> " For decades both the public and physicians thought the

pharmaceuticals were looking out for the health and welfare of

society and never challenged what the industry claimed, " says Arnold

Relman, emeritus professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

>

> " Now everyone is starting to wise up to an industry [that] is

hugely profitable and driven, obsessed with making more profits and

to do that by any means it can, even if it means stretching laws,

stretching ethics. "

>

> A flurry of new books by high-profile authors - including Kassirer

and Marcia Angell, another former editor at The New England Journal

of Medicine - as well as court cases, such as the one against the

antidepressant Paxil brought by New York's crusading Attorney-

General Eliot Spitzer, reveals the way in which Big Pharma has

managed to generate profits and cover up its skeletons.

>

> The system is enabled, say reform-minded doctors, by the US Food

and Drug Administration - which generates most of its budget from

drug companies and has proven to be " nothing but a lapdog " , Angell

says - as well as by physicians who blithely accept dubious studies

provided by drug company sales representatives.

>

> " Suppose you are a big pharmaceutical company. You make a drug

that is approved for a very limited use. How could you turn it into

a blockbuster? " Angell says.

>

> " You could simply market the drug for unapproved, or off-label,

uses even though it's against the law to do so. You do that by

carrying out 'research' that falls way below the standard required

for FDA approval, then 'educating' doctors about any favourable

results. That way you circumvent the law [because doctors can

prescribe whatever drugs they see fit].

>

> " You could say you were not marketing for unapproved uses; you

were merely disseminating the results of research to doctors, who

can legally prescribe a drug for any use. But it would be bogus

education about bogus research. It would really be marketing. "

>

> Nowhere is this better illustrated than with the antidepressants

known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of drug of

dubious benefit that, through savvy marketing, has become a multi-

billion-dollar cash cow.

>

> A staggering one in 10 women in the US are on these drugs. In

Australia, there was a 350 per cent increase in prescriptions for

SSRIs - such as Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil - between 1990 and 2002.

>

> Yet, says Breggin, who has appeared at trials on behalf of people

who commit crimes or of families who have lost a family member to

suicide while under the influence of SSRIs, " not only do these drugs

not work but they're [also] dangerous " .

>

> Barth Menzies, a Los Angeles lawyer who is perhaps the

leading antidepressant litigation attorney in the world, explains

the disease is marketed and sold in order to sell the drugs.

>

> " That's why it's been so successful, " she says. " The drug's a

narcotic, it's an upper, so no wonder you feel better. "

>

> Kassirer says drug companies - the most powerful special interest

in Washington, with an army of 700 lobbyists - have public relations

firms draw up " research papers " based on selective studies,

conducted by medical researchers who dare not go against the company

line, to promote their drugs and then have " experts " put their names

to them, often just parroting what the company wants disseminated.

>

> " These councils with the official sounding names, the alliance of

something or the foundation for something, what are they doing? " he

asks. " They're doctors who are being paid to promote awareness of

some condition [that] invariably is treated by a drug made by the

drug company [that] is bankrolling the council.

>

> " The system is awash in drug company money and it's corrupt. All

this money and favours is forcing doctors to do things that I think

are pretty terrible. It creates deception, erodes professionalism

and is destroying the profession.

>

> " If anybody is up to their ears in conflicts of interest, it's

psychiatrists. "

>

> Critics say some mental illnesses are invented by panels of

psychiatrists - who in turn are paid large sums by drug companies -

to sell drugs. Kassirer cites the example of executive dysfunction,

a new-found disease supposedly marked by fatigue, apathy, bad mood

and an inability to communicate clearly. Yet even those who diagnose

executive dysfunction say that it has no standard medical definition

and is better regarded as a concept, he says.

>

> " But it doesn't stop them prescribing drugs for the so-called

condition, " Kassirer says.

>

> Barth Menzies says she has seen evidence for years that the drug

companies knew their antidepressants not only didn't work but were

causing suicidal or violent tendencies among some users, yet tried

to hide the evidence for fear of financial loss.

>

> " The internal documents we've found through discovery show what a

total sham these antidepressants are, " she says. " The science is

bought and paid for, experts are willing to sell their names and

their souls, the whole thing's been an amazing web of lies and

fraud.

>

> " I used to think, 'How many people have to die before someone does

something about it?' And then I saw the answer. In their greed to

find new markets, they started pushing SSRIs on kids. I knew that

once kids started dying, someone would finally say enough is

enough. "

>

> Authorities in Britain were the first to ban the prescribing of

SSRIs - except Prozac, although even the FDA now agrees that Prozac

works in the same way and has the same inherent dangers - to

children and adolescents.

>

> In the US - where more than 1 million youngsters are on these

drugs - the FDA was forced to issue a black box warning on the

SSRIs, while Spitzer has filed fraud charges against

GlaxoKline, the world's second largest drug maker, for

blatantly hiding or trying to spin negative findings of clinical

trials of Paxil's effects on children and teenagers.

>

> GSK settled the suit but is facing an avalanche of lawsuits from

people whose children hurt or even killed themselves - or others -

while on the drugs. Part of GSK's settlement forced it to publish

findings of all trials on its website, though critics say this needs

to be independently monitored. Meanwhile, Big Pharma is fighting

efforts in Washington to force all trials, irrespective of their

results, to be made public.

>

> " I'm not that hopeful for any real change, " Angell says. " They

have bought politicians and doctors. They've looked at everyone and

anyone who could stand in their way and they've thrown money at

them. The only hope we have is a grassroots revolution that will

make the politicians decide they love votes more than drug company

money. "

>

> It is little wonder that , whose scathing films on

the gun lobby and President W. Bush have been among the most

successful documentaries in history, is pointing his lens at Big

Pharma. And the working title of his proposed documentary? Sicko.

>

> Lusetich is The Australian's Los Angeles correspondent.

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

is a movie producer that has also written several books and

had a TV show. His stuff is social reform in nature, he is very liberal.

Bowling for Columbine is his movie, it had some good points but I was

appalled at his treatment of NRA frontman Charlton Heston in that movie.

He wrote a book Dude Where's My Country? that goes over the Patriot Act and

scared the crap out of me with that destruction of liberty legislation.

He uses press for most of his research which is rather shoddy researching in

my opinion

but over all say some important things to say. His 911 movie was supposed to

unseat

Bush's re-election and was supressed by the book company who was supposed to

publish it. Librarians found out about it and raised such a stink that it

was published eventually.

You can look him up on www.amazon.com or www.imdb.com for books and movies

respectively.

Who is Micheal ?

Is he the big guy with the beard that just recently did a movie

involving politics. Who made a mochery of the Republican party and

their issues? At the bottom of this post, it says that he is now

pointing a camera at Big Pharma. I would pay good money to see this

one. I can't wait. What a way to expose the injustices going on in

our counry. I love this man. It seems that American's don't believe

anything unless it's on the t.v. screen.

Wake up America,

Connie

>

>

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,1170159

5%5E28737,00.html

>

> Busting Big Pharma

> Lusetich

> December 16, 2004

> WHAT happens when a slick sales force of 87,000 is set loose with

billions of dollars to wine and dine, entertain and educate the US's

600,000 doctors?

>

> The short answer is that six years ago Americans spent $US89

billion on prescription drugs. Last year the amount exploded to

$US149 billion. In the year to March 2004, Australia spent $5.8

billion on prescription drugs.

>

> The US accounts for half of all global profits for Big Pharma, as

the pharmaceutical corporations are known.

>

> " The result of all those attractive women in short skirts armed

with pseudo-science invading the practices of doctors is that

Americans are over-medicated, taking far too many drugs, most of

which they don't even need, and they are paying too much for them, "

says Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of

Medicine and prominent critic of Big Pharma.

>

> Beyond the skyrocketing profits, however, lies a darker picture of

a virtually unregulated omnipotent industry whose questionable

practices - some call them criminal - in the quest for higher

revenues has turned Big Pharma into the latest corporate villain.

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> As a growing army of critics - and the courts - fling open the

doors of the world's leading drug companies to reveal unfavourable

buried studies, the parallels to Big Oil, Big Banking and, the most

notorious of all, Big Tobacco are striking.

>

> " These guys and their ethics are precisely where Big Tobacco was

20 years ago, " says Breggin, a prominent New York psychiatrist

who has campaigned against the spread of controversial

antidepressants.

>

> Scandals, such as US pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co yanking its

$US2.5billion ($3.3 billion) a year blockbuster painkiller Vioxx off

the market on September 30 after the company belatedly conceded it

was causing heart attacks and strokes, have led to an unprecedented

erosion in public trust.

>

> In the past year 300,000 Australians - about one-third of patients

suffering osteoarthritis - used Vioxx. Since its September

withdrawal more than 600 Australians who suffered heart attacks,

strokes and blood-related illnesses after taking the drug have

joined a multi-billion-dollar class action against Merck.

>

> " For decades both the public and physicians thought the

pharmaceuticals were looking out for the health and welfare of

society and never challenged what the industry claimed, " says Arnold

Relman, emeritus professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

>

> " Now everyone is starting to wise up to an industry [that] is

hugely profitable and driven, obsessed with making more profits and

to do that by any means it can, even if it means stretching laws,

stretching ethics. "

>

> A flurry of new books by high-profile authors - including Kassirer

and Marcia Angell, another former editor at The New England Journal

of Medicine - as well as court cases, such as the one against the

antidepressant Paxil brought by New York's crusading Attorney-

General Eliot Spitzer, reveals the way in which Big Pharma has

managed to generate profits and cover up its skeletons.

>

> The system is enabled, say reform-minded doctors, by the US Food

and Drug Administration - which generates most of its budget from

drug companies and has proven to be " nothing but a lapdog " , Angell

says - as well as by physicians who blithely accept dubious studies

provided by drug company sales representatives.

>

> " Suppose you are a big pharmaceutical company. You make a drug

that is approved for a very limited use. How could you turn it into

a blockbuster? " Angell says.

>

> " You could simply market the drug for unapproved, or off-label,

uses even though it's against the law to do so. You do that by

carrying out 'research' that falls way below the standard required

for FDA approval, then 'educating' doctors about any favourable

results. That way you circumvent the law [because doctors can

prescribe whatever drugs they see fit].

>

> " You could say you were not marketing for unapproved uses; you

were merely disseminating the results of research to doctors, who

can legally prescribe a drug for any use. But it would be bogus

education about bogus research. It would really be marketing. "

>

> Nowhere is this better illustrated than with the antidepressants

known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of drug of

dubious benefit that, through savvy marketing, has become a multi-

billion-dollar cash cow.

>

> A staggering one in 10 women in the US are on these drugs. In

Australia, there was a 350 per cent increase in prescriptions for

SSRIs - such as Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil - between 1990 and 2002.

>

> Yet, says Breggin, who has appeared at trials on behalf of people

who commit crimes or of families who have lost a family member to

suicide while under the influence of SSRIs, " not only do these drugs

not work but they're [also] dangerous " .

>

> Barth Menzies, a Los Angeles lawyer who is perhaps the

leading antidepressant litigation attorney in the world, explains

the disease is marketed and sold in order to sell the drugs.

>

> " That's why it's been so successful, " she says. " The drug's a

narcotic, it's an upper, so no wonder you feel better. "

>

> Kassirer says drug companies - the most powerful special interest

in Washington, with an army of 700 lobbyists - have public relations

firms draw up " research papers " based on selective studies,

conducted by medical researchers who dare not go against the company

line, to promote their drugs and then have " experts " put their names

to them, often just parroting what the company wants disseminated.

>

> " These councils with the official sounding names, the alliance of

something or the foundation for something, what are they doing? " he

asks. " They're doctors who are being paid to promote awareness of

some condition [that] invariably is treated by a drug made by the

drug company [that] is bankrolling the council.

>

> " The system is awash in drug company money and it's corrupt. All

this money and favours is forcing doctors to do things that I think

are pretty terrible. It creates deception, erodes professionalism

and is destroying the profession.

>

> " If anybody is up to their ears in conflicts of interest, it's

psychiatrists. "

>

> Critics say some mental illnesses are invented by panels of

psychiatrists - who in turn are paid large sums by drug companies -

to sell drugs. Kassirer cites the example of executive dysfunction,

a new-found disease supposedly marked by fatigue, apathy, bad mood

and an inability to communicate clearly. Yet even those who diagnose

executive dysfunction say that it has no standard medical definition

and is better regarded as a concept, he says.

>

> " But it doesn't stop them prescribing drugs for the so-called

condition, " Kassirer says.

>

> Barth Menzies says she has seen evidence for years that the drug

companies knew their antidepressants not only didn't work but were

causing suicidal or violent tendencies among some users, yet tried

to hide the evidence for fear of financial loss.

>

> " The internal documents we've found through discovery show what a

total sham these antidepressants are, " she says. " The science is

bought and paid for, experts are willing to sell their names and

their souls, the whole thing's been an amazing web of lies and

fraud.

>

> " I used to think, 'How many people have to die before someone does

something about it?' And then I saw the answer. In their greed to

find new markets, they started pushing SSRIs on kids. I knew that

once kids started dying, someone would finally say enough is

enough. "

>

> Authorities in Britain were the first to ban the prescribing of

SSRIs - except Prozac, although even the FDA now agrees that Prozac

works in the same way and has the same inherent dangers - to

children and adolescents.

>

> In the US - where more than 1 million youngsters are on these

drugs - the FDA was forced to issue a black box warning on the

SSRIs, while Spitzer has filed fraud charges against

GlaxoKline, the world's second largest drug maker, for

blatantly hiding or trying to spin negative findings of clinical

trials of Paxil's effects on children and teenagers.

>

> GSK settled the suit but is facing an avalanche of lawsuits from

people whose children hurt or even killed themselves - or others -

while on the drugs. Part of GSK's settlement forced it to publish

findings of all trials on its website, though critics say this needs

to be independently monitored. Meanwhile, Big Pharma is fighting

efforts in Washington to force all trials, irrespective of their

results, to be made public.

>

> " I'm not that hopeful for any real change, " Angell says. " They

have bought politicians and doctors. They've looked at everyone and

anyone who could stand in their way and they've thrown money at

them. The only hope we have is a grassroots revolution that will

make the politicians decide they love votes more than drug company

money. "

>

> It is little wonder that , whose scathing films on

the gun lobby and President W. Bush have been among the most

successful documentaries in history, is pointing his lens at Big

Pharma. And the working title of his proposed documentary? Sicko.

>

> Lusetich is The Australian's Los Angeles correspondent.

>

>

>

>