The FDA Wants to Stop You from Protecting Yourself Against Drug Companies

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Dr. Peter Breggin
The FDA Wants to Stop You from Protecting Yourself Against Drug Companies
Posted June 14, 2008 | 07:54 PM (EST)




Suing a drug company is your only way as an individual citizen of protecting yourself against drug company malfeasance. It's the only way for you or your survivors to get justice or compensation if you have been injured or killed by drug company negligence. It should be a basic right under the law, and right now it is; but the FDA and the drug companies are on the verge of taking it away from you.

Without the right to sue pharmaceutical companies, not only will individuals fail to obtain justice, sealed company data about the harmful effects of drug will remain secret. That can become a public health problem when serious adverse reactions are hidden from view. The Wall Street Journal has released data indicating that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) may have manipulated research in order to hide that its antidepressant Paxil was causing people to attempt suicide. In the weekend edition of June 14-15, 2008, the newspaper described how the drug manipulated its figure to disguise the frequency of Paxil-induced suicide attempts.

I had known for years about GSK manipulating its data and had attempted without success to get the FDA to acknowledge and to examine the problem. I originally discovered the shenanigans eight years ago when I was examining the secret files of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as a medical expert in a product liability suit against the company. California attorney Don Farber and my assistant Ian Goddard accompanied me.

The suit was brought by the family of a man named Lacuzong who had drowned himself and his two young children in a bathtub a few days after starting to take Paxil. He had no previous history of violence or suicidal thoughts.

As I went through the hundreds of boxes of materials packed into a large room in the GSK company headquarters, I came upon something remarkable. GSK had managed to hide that Paxil was causing an increased rate of suicide attempts compared to placebo. The company jacked up the number of suicide attempts in the placebo group, until it looked more dangerous to take placebo than to take Paxil. In reality, there were more suicide attempts among the patients taking Paxil. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/the-fda-wants-to-stop-you_b_107162.html

[sharesunited]

1. Part of a grand conservative strategy to immunize big business

from tort liability.

Their purpose is doubly diabolical, because it is based on the premise that if a government agency has approved something, then the private sector should be held harmless.

This policy is at once a windfall for corporations AND slanders the regulator.

Hey, blame your government, they approved it!

[Richard Steele]

2. K&R