Major Fraud Plea Has University Scientists Regretting Journal Article (Risperdal)

[Corncrake]

Big Pharma has too much money and too much influence. Once again profit overrides honesty and integrity:

Major Fraud Plea Has University Scientists Regretting Journal Article

Just days after federal prosecutors concluded one of the nation’s largest fraud settlements involving a single drug, at least some university researchers are retreating from a medical-journal article that helped sell the medicine to children.

Denis Daneman, a professor and chair of pediatrics at the University of Toronto, said he had asked the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, which published the 2003 article evaluating the schizophrenia medication Risperdal, to remove his name from it.

And one of his co-authors, Robert L. Findling, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, said Johnson & Johnson’s acceptance of the settlement also had prompted him to reconsider the 2003 article.

“In light of recent events,” Dr. Findling said in a written statement, “I am concerned about the questions raised and, if there are errors, am committed to determining what they may be and to correcting them.”

Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s biggest corporations, this month reached a $2.2-billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over the company’s efforts to market some of its drugs, primarily Risperdal, beyond its federally approved uses.

Dr. Daneman, who is also pediatrician in chief at the Hospital for Sick Children, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto, initially responded to the Johnson & Johnson settlement by saying he was surprised by any suggestion that his work might have been part of an effort to mislead consumers about Risperdal.

Rest of article here:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolato...-article/33713

[sigma6]

great share, good to see articles like this exposing the system for what it is... taking pharmaceutical chemicals concentrated to the point of becoming poisons, is bad enough, but trying to feed it to children in exchange for taking so much money from society (to feed all the secret society controlled government agencies) that all children are essentially being born into lives of poverty and malnutrition from contaminated mothers, full of toxins and all the complications that cascade from that...

that the solution is to then third party bill the government to pay them to force feed innocent children drugs is deplorable and disgusting...

... keep paying those taxes, secret societies running your all your government agencies at the highest levels (the pillars of society) need your money...

[Pink Rabbit]

Let me give an example of a patient I treated who was helped by low dose risperidone. But also important to preface the black box warning (most severe warning there is ) that antipsychotics give death risk in both small and large doses from choking, aspiration pneumonia, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, weight gain, and irregular heart rate. Nevertheless hear this case. 75 y/o early Alzheimer's Disease. She had severe hearing loss. At night she thought she heard screaming from the neighbors house. She imagined the couple next door was beating their young daughter. So my patient called 911. Police came and investigated. Pt couldn't recall making call. She reported them over and over and finally the neighbor got a restraining order not to call 911 on them again. She did it again and was arrested and put in jail over night. The son wanted her to stay put with her husband in their marital home but he couldn't stop her behavior. A light dose 0.5 mg resperidone solved the problem and the delusion no longer was active. 2 years later they ran out and she became paranoid and accusatory again. She is still able to live at home back on med which finally is generic. I hardly ever prescribe antipsychotics and only use as a last resort. I DO NOT believe most published studies, esp recent ones as they are easily 'fudged'. So, occasionally antipsychotics have benefit.
I also would never pursue an academic position as the 'good old boys club' rules require lying and avoiding truth on topics when told. Some academics are honest but the tops at every university have been paid off in my opinion and the older more ethical ones are a dying breed. Call it 'self serving interests' if you want to be politically correct.

[Ellisa]

The fact is that many medicines that are life saving can have really dire effects on some who take them. Even accounting for the mis-diagnosed and the possible malpractice of greed and incompetence, there will still be people who are react badly to some seemingly harmless medicine. The fact is that many of us are helped by the treatment that can be provided by the correct prescription of medication. This does not deny that trickery or arrogance may be a part of the problem but I like your story PR. A very troubled old lady is able to stay with her family by the correct usage of a drug that, used indiscriminately, is lethal or harmful to others who do not need it.

[Corncrake]

At its most simple, doctors need the full research data on a drug before prescribing it. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies don't report the more unflattering results of their research. They are profit driven and research is expensive. Anyone can see the problem here, you read the good reports and prescribe the drug. The Government has never passed laws making the drugs companies publish all the available data. I am not knocking medicine - but the methodology has to be transparent.

[Pink Rabbit]

I dont always trust published articles, but I do read the PI the product information, a legal document, you know that white paper folded up a hundred times with tiny print that is in the samples? Anyway you can get the PI on all drugs from the internet and sometimes on FDA.gov. I also subscribe by email to all FDA alerts. That way you can get the updates to statins etc. It isnt a perfect system by a long shot, but it is better than not reading what is available. I am a neurologist and treat MS, multiple sclerosis among other diseases. I only prescribe meds for patients that are REALLY suffering and only as a trial and error method for an individual patient. When I was a resident we would spend hours and hours on each study and tear it to shreds. Each article has many many flaws. That's why the studies have to be repeated at least once in order to have any validity at all. When the medical societies started accepting studies that had only been done once, I knew there was a serious problem. Sometimes the societies rubber stamp proceedures like cardiac stents that were NEVER proven for a certain indication at all !. As to promoting drugs for non proven indications I can smell those when they come to my office. I give the drug reps a real hard time, but many of them are glad to learn something new. Or at least they pretend to. :-) Any way. I could go on and on, but will stop.

[Corncrake]

PR - thanks for your response. It is good to know that there are ethical doctors out there! I am not in medicine but have been on the receiving end a few times so like to keep informed. I have a dentist friend now in her mid-forties who once told me quite candidly of the pressure she and her colleagues have received - ever since graduating - from pharmaceutical reps. I think - a bit like commercials on television - you can kid yourself that they are having no effect but they are. Apart from their unrelenting presence they give out expensive personal presents as well as donating televisions, etc. for waiting rooms and fund trips to the theatre and expensive meals. One could argue that this goes on in all business but areas of public health and safety should be protected from such influence. Some drugs are either not available at all on the NHS or in the private sector are very expensive - if there was not so much 'marketing' the cost could be kept a lot lower and maybe those people for whom there is no alternative would feel the benefit.

[rgray222]

Big pharma money and government grant money are pretty much the same thing. They pay people to come up with the findings they deem desirable. If the findings look as if they will not agree with government or pharma they immediately lose their funding and the findings are quietly put in the bottom draw. This is precisely why people in the United states pay much more for drugs than the rest of the world. The pharmaceutical companies build fines into the price of the drugs. The people that die and become severely injured are simply considered collateral damage.

This is why something like global warming needs open discussion and honest debate, not just "paid for" findings from universities and corporations. Many corporations and universities make their living providing providing foregone conclusions to those that are willing to pay the highest price.

Here some good ideas from natural news that would start to solve some of these problems.

• Ending all drug patents and shifting R&D to publicly-funded universities. This would immediately take the profit out of junk science drug promotions and sharply reduce the cost of drugs to the public.

• The breaking apart of the FDA into separate "Food" and "Drug" regulators.

• Reforming the mission statement of the NIH to study causes of health rather than causes of disease.

• The outlawing of FDA, CDC, USDA and FTC employees from accepting jobs inside the very industries they regulate. (Stop the "revolving door" of regulators taking jobs with pharma.)

• The outlawing of drug company bribery of doctors, financial influence of medical schools and commercial funding of science journals.

[Pink Rabbit]

Rgray222 the last one in your list is being established now. There is going to be a website where you can see all the money or items given to each physician. Right now they aren't allowed to give us pens even. All they give us is lunch which they want to bring to thr office and I try to avoid that so my published number will be low. They do have a sneaky one though esp the past few years. The new method is to get physicians participating in community based drug studies where the physicians are well paid and then become coerced in a way to be positive about the product, esp to get more studies. You should be wary if your physician is doing drug studies in my opinion.

And another point about me resisting being brainwashed. I get alot of dirt on one product from the drug rep representing the competition. But you are right I can be mislead and not realize.

[shadowstalker]

Now that these few good men have come out of the pharmaceutical closet, what will become of them next?
Sudden loss of credibility.
Loss of ten year?
loss of life?

It's sad, we all know what happens to folks who try to make things right.
I hope they become full blown whistle-blowers before anything bad happens to them..