Big Pharma is Killing Us.....literally

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:



Glaxo's Avandia Cover-Up


LAST THURSDAY, US and European regulators delivered a major blow to one of the world's largest drug manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline. The European Medicines Agency suspended sales of the pharma giant's multibillion-dollar diabetes drug, Avandia, which has been linked to heart attacks and other cardiac problems, saying that its "benefits…no longer outweigh its risks." The Food and Drug Administration severely restricted use of the drug to patients for whom there are no other options, stopping short of pulling Avandia off the market.

The fate of Avandia—which one FDA analysis blamed for causing some 83,000 heart attacks—is one part of the story. The other is about how for years GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) buried and downplayed questions about Avandia's safety. As the lead investigator for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on the Senate Finance Committee's investigation into the drug, I spent three years probing Avandia. During that time, my colleagues and I combed through over 250,000 pages of internal GSK documents and interviewed dozens of witnesses and whistleblowers. What emerged was a troubling picture of a company that had placed corporate profits over patient safety. While suppressing inconvenient evidence about the risks of its top-selling drug, the company even began to develop another drug to treat the very side effect Avandia has been linked to.

Here's what happened: As far back as 2000, GSK had evidence that Avandia causes the body to increase levels of a potentially deadly enzyme. The company's own researchers have published studies connecting this enzyme to heart disease. But instead of informing patients and doctors, GSK patented a diagnostic test to detect the enzyme and began pouring millions into research to create a new blockbuster drug that would inhibit it, preventing heart attacks. Call it cross-product synergy. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/glaxosmithkline-avandia

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Saving social security, one unsuspecting lab rat at a time. n/t

[surrealAmerican]

2. Where are the criminal penalties for this?

Fines will not do: they murdered thousands of people for profit. Someone is responsible.

[HuckleB]

3. For a very good explanation of the science and studies over time, and how this story played out...

See: Medical Science and Public Opinion: The Avandia Story http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6476

The author really digs into how this has been evaluated over time. I think this gives a great deal of context to the Mother Jones piece. But what do I know?

:hi:

PS: On edit... I just ran across this bit, which adds a little to the Avandia story specifically, as well as quite non-specifically.

Avandia Goes Down: A Research Rant
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/09/24/avandia_goes_down_a_research_rant.php

...this adds a bit of the story, too...

Avandia’s Reckoning Day
http://cenblog.org/the-haystack/2010/09/avandias-reckoning-day/