Drug, Media, BAD PRESS IS BETTER THAN NO PRESS Re: Busting Big Pharma

[Guest guest]

>

Re: Re: Busting Big Pharma

>

> 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]

>

Re: Re: Busting Big Pharma

>

> 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]

>

Re: Re: Busting Big Pharma

>

> 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]

>

Re: Re: Busting Big Pharma

>

> 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.

> >

> >

> >

> >