It's hard not to pass on at least some of the blame to the Bush administration and GOP who have systematically cut funding and resources to the bone. In addition, they've also made it a point to let industry "self regulate" instead of providing the oversight that Americans want and need. People expect business to get away with whatever they can and yes, they do exactly that. Even if information was passed to the FDA it's hard to see them even giving a damn because that might slow business. Merck is in a world of trouble but the Bush-FDA is certainly not looking very competent either. For all of the talk about how precious human life is by the GOP they sure don't treat it that way in the Bush-FDA.
As if it's not bad enough that Big Pharma has a compliant FDA that allows anything that fails to kill people, immediately, at least. Big Pharma is supposed to publish test results though they don't unless they are the results they want published. Big Pharma is supposed to stay away from patients but again, they dive right into patient visits to sell their snake oil of the month. Now despite jury rigging the system to their benefit in almost every possible way, that's not enough. Pfizer is now suing the New England Journal of Medicine to reveal their confidential reviewers. Pfizer wants to break the long respected confidential peer review process that has helped raise questions when others were afraid to speak out.
The US courts are due to rule on this case later in the week and despite the obvious blow to confidential peer review, this also once again shows that it's not just consumers who are launching lawsuits, driving up costs. What about the countless lawsuits Big Pharma initiates? How much will this end up costing everyone - including possible lives - if confidential reviews are struck down and a drug kills people? Perhaps Big Pharma ought to move back into the business of helping people instead of only helping their bottom line.
This in response to deaths and an inability to prosecute GlaxoSmithKline in relation to those deaths allegedly linked to the GSK drugs because there were no specific laws related to the alleged actions by the company to hide test results. Interesting how those laws work in the favor of such companies though it's good to see the UK cracking down. My only caution is that ethics have little to do with this industry so until you speak to the almighty bottom dollar profit, they may not listen.
GSK could not be prosecuted for concealing results which proved the antidepressant Seroxat caused children to become suicidal because the law only obliges companies to hand over safety data from trials when drugs are being licensed. That loophole will now be closed.
Woods said yesterday he could not rule out the possibility that other companies were sitting on unpublished data that could cause them commercial damage.
"I think there is a tension between marketing considerations and the ethical dimension of making health products," he said. "We have to look again at that. The pharmaceutical industry has to look again at that. You could even say there is a positive disincentive to explore the data as fully as it could be explored."
The "free market" Republican program comes back to bite America in the ass, exactly as predicted. Nice. Like most Americans I grew up understanding that the free market meant natural market forces would intervene to impact prices. In the Republican model, this means setting up a comfy sofa with lots of cushy pillows for business and tying two hands behind the back of consumers. Maybe it's his own free market experience of dad using his influence to gain admission into Yale and Harvard that has led him and the Republicans to mistakenly believe that Big Pharma would be reasonable or that somehow the "market" would be involved. Then again maybe AARP who supported Bush at election time (which helped tip the balance) was just plain stupid and believed Bush would do the right thing. There is no precedent for Big Pharma doing the right thing.
Drug makers increased their prices last year by an average of 7.4 percent for brand-name medicines most commonly prescribed to the elderly, according to the advocacy group AARP.
The increase was about 2.5 times overall inflation, continuing a long-standing trend.
Considering the widespread use of anti-depressants this is big news. As a person who tries to do just about anything to avoid pharmaceuticals (I don't react well to them) I wonder if the medical community will start promoting alternative treatments such as diet change and other natural remedies. The problem, according to the pharma industry, is that it is difficult to run tests on alternative treatments and have mathematical results as you can with modern medicine. Perhaps. I also believe that all too often Big Pharma cherry picks data or entire studies, as this new report suggests. One could easily view this as falsely overcharging insurance companies and consumers and another reason why health care is so expensive.
Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, does not work and nor do similar drugs in the same class, according to a major review released today.
The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.
When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs.
