...because the responsibility of public health is to protect public health, not to sell out the public's health to Big Tobacco...
The very place you and the rest of the uninvited busybodies go wrong.
My choice to smoke a cigarette becomes PRIVATE "health."
Public Health is communicable diseases. Things that are contagious and infectious and PASSED AROUND from people TO other people. THAT is Public Health. NOT the INFORMED private choices I make.
That you resist believing that smoking is a free will choice is YOUR problem, not mine. We need a cure for YOU and from you. You impose your disease on me. Come to think of it, it's more a public mental health problem. Whereby your actions are deemed to pose an immediate danger (not quite to yourselves) to others.
Let me rework your language for you:
...because the responsibility of public health is to protect public health, not to sell out the public's health to Big Food
...because the responsibility of public health is to protect public health, not to sell out the public's health to Big Mountain Climbing
because the responsibility of public health is to protect public health, not to sell out the public's health to Big Candy
because the responsibility of public health is to protect public health, not to sell out the public's health to Big Tater Tot
You get the drift. You won't admit or say you do but you do.
Public health is not just about communicable diseases....people who get too fat get diabetes and heart diseases and cancer and my tax dollars (and yours) pays for these ailments (poor people get fat because of cheap food provided by Big Food)....Medicaid costs for fat people get paid by all of us....in contrast, people who smoke don't clog up the health care system (they die off).
According to all the busybodies they are apparently the ONLY people in the world that pay taxes for evvvvveryone else. From what I gather from hearing that over and over and over again is that it comes down to ONE guy out there paying for everyone else. It must be. All you hear is **I** pay for you.
More importantly, if LIBERTY comes with a price tag, so be it.
But no, the busybodies will trade liberty away if it costs them anything. Idiots.
Hi, guys.
Health professionals are often more susceptible to drug company sales techniques than they think they are - and that includes PR lines.
Here are some indications which should make us all think, especially for the sake of the oft-invoked children, in the form of selected chunks from various of these important articles, which should be, if possible, read in their entirety.
Here, people really do lose an average of 25 years of life for product sales and company profits, but they often have no choice - and certainly no oportunity to make an informed choice - as to whether the risks and benefits work out into something worthwhile for themselves.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/search/...h/label/
Zyprexa
'... 402 psychiatrists who dutifully follow a paradigm of care promoted by the continuing medical education courses--Those courses are paid for and controlled by Big Pharma.
'Under industry's influence psychiatrists seem to have lost the ability to think: they have not stopped even to consider how this pradigm of care is inducing disabling chronic diseases and shortening their patients's lives. That is a fact reported by a government sponsored survey of 8 state mental health statistics: Mortality rate among consumers of mental health services is 25 years younger than other U.S. citizens.
'How can treating psychiatrists not notice that their patients are dying???
'The 402 psychiatrists are merely reiterating Eli Lilly's latest spin aimed at diverting attention from the drug-induced carnage.'
(A number of pharma drugs are among the large pool of products which, used as directed, kill.)
'The drug maker has spent about $1.2 billion to settle roughly 28,000 Zyprexa claims since 2005. Lilly said Tuesday it had settled an additional 900 claims but did not disclose a settlement amount.
'The company still faces product liability lawsuits from roughly 750 patients.'
(But the chronic lawsuits by the damaged and the survivors of victims who didn't, typically still allow for major profits, therefore making the operation worthwhile for the company.)
'... An accumulating body of evidence is tarnishing the reputation of medical doctors whose drug prescribing practices are shown to be mostly (if not entirely) influenced by the drug industry.'
(Physicians are not intended to act as drug pushers and immoral arbiters of industrial 'acceptability imposed on the population; rather a lot of them studied medicine to not only make good money but to help people get well.)
'A report by the General Accounting Office (2006) documented that in 2002 pharmaceutical companies spent $2.6 billion on direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) compared to $18.5 billion on marketing to physicians ($11.9 billion on promotion + $6.6 billion cost of "free" samples) --that's $30,000 per physician annually. In 2005, the amount spent on DTCA doubled: $4.2 billion on DTCA compared to $7.2 billion promoting drugs to physicians plus an unstated amount on "free" samples which in 2004 amounted to $15.9 billion.'
(No wonder they get suckered by anti claims - they're pre-programed.)
'According to this study, the vast majority of doctors have such industry ties. As servants of industry they follow industry influenced prescription formularies (e.g. Texas Medication Algorithm Project, TMAP) reducing the healing profession to "Medicine for Dummies."
'Not least influential in facilitating the commercialization of medicine are the medical journals which number anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000. [6] 'The influence of major medical journals such as The Journal of the American Medical Association and The New England Journal of Medicine, translates into hundreds of millions of dollars for a drug company--in the case of blockbuster drugs, their influence translates into billions of dollars.'
'... No matter how loud the protestations, the fact is, medical journals' financial dependency on the drug industry has corrupted the review and publication process. Richard Smith, MD. former editor of the BMJ (for 25 years) who has become a leading critic of the journal business, has written a highly readable book, "The Trouble With Medical Journals," that provides laymen an insider's insights into the thorny problems that may put medical journals--as we know them--out of business. [7]
'The book is addressed to the general reader who is shown why journals matter to us: we are all stakeholders whose interest is ill served if medical journals disseminate commercial propaganda under the guise of science. Unlike arcane scientific journals, Dr. Smith tells us, medical journals are not read by scientists: they are read by practicing doctors who are NOT scientists. Doctors, he notes, are not even trained "to appraise critically a scientific article." ... The average doctor spends not much more than an hour a week on professional reading--and even that hour is not devoted to scientific journal articles. Most doctors read supplementary "throwaways" funded by pharmaceutical advertising. This helps to explain how industry's biased reports--not science--influence doctors' prescribing practices.
'Dr. Smith is fully immersed in the evolving telecommunications world which enables lay people to get the same scientific information that their doctors do. Well informed patients are likely to present a challenge to doctors who rely on biased information sources.'
(This applies in all areas.)
'There's a new article in the online journal PLoS Medicine looking at the ways drug companies influence doctors and showing that doctors are not trained to recognize this subtle manipulation. This is not an issue that is going to disappear off the radar screen. The fact is, scrutiny will likely become more aggressive rather than less.'
'Furthermore, Lilly's aggressive marketing AFTER they knew Zyprexa actions clearly show that its executives demonstrate a depraved disregard for human life:
"The discrepancy between Lilly's initial data and what it later submitted came at a time when Zyprexa's sales were soaring, even as some doctors and foreign regulatory agencies were questioning the drug's safety." '
'The F.D.A. has never concluded that Zyprexa causes diabetes more than other widely used psychiatric drugs, although the American Diabetes Association has.
Zyprexa remains Lilly's top-selling drug, with $4 billion in worldwide annual sales. But prescriptions in the United States have fallen nearly 50 percent since 2003 amid the safety concerns.'
'The document from 2000 and others were provided to The Times by James B. Gottstein, a lawyer who represents mentally ill people he says are forced to take psychiatric medications against their will.'
'Bloomberg News reports (below) that Montana is the 7th state to file suit against Eli Lilly for its Zyprexa marketing practices. The other states are: Pennsylvania, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alaska, New Mexico and Mississippi. More than twenty are investigating.'
' "In nursing homes they sedate elderly patients with dementia and other types of thought disorders. It's known that these drugs don't work in these settings and you say that it's off label use and they should do what they want. But the fact is ... that it increases mortality, perhaps by a 100 percent, doubles mortality. So I did a back of the envelope calculation of this and you probably have 15 000 elderly patients, people in nursing homes, dying each year from the off label use of antipsychotic medications for an indications that ...the FDA knows the drug doesn't work. This problem has been known to the FDA for years and years." '
(So the misery inflicted on elderly smokers certainly wouldn't matter.)
'Dr. Graham's statement is borne out by a letter from FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (November 1996) to Eli Lilly. The warning letter shows that soon after Zyprexa was approved, Lilly misrepresented the drug's known risks that are indicated in its approved label. The letter warned that Lilly's marketing included "false" and "misleading" promotional activities "in violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act." The letter stated that Lilly's promotional claims "of superiority over other antipsychotic products are unsubstantiated" that Lilly's claim that Zyprexa was "superior, highly effective, virtually free of side effects, easy to use product" "is contrary to the approved labeling." '
'The letter cited an interactive teleconference (October 1996) during which Dr. Gary Tollefson, Vice President of Lilly Research Laboratories, misrepresented the drug's adverse side effect profile. Dr. Tollefson claimed that weight gain--listed in the label as an adverse event -- was "a therapeutic benefit." "When asked a question [by a physician] about weight gain, Dr. Tollefson's response misleadingly turned an adverse event into a therapeutic benefit." He said: "we really look at this, with the majority of patients, as being part of a therapeutic recovery rather than an adverse event." '
To be continued.
Con't:
'An article in SLATE, "How Lilly Sells Zyprexa," by Bonnie Goldstein, a former special investigator to the U.S. Senate and an investigative producer for ABC News, reveals the content of one of the secret documents: the "Zyprexa Retail Implementation Guide," a 2001 memo (13 pages) instructing sales reps how to persuade primary care physicians to prescribe Zyprexa, "a versatile psychotropic proven effective in a large number of patients who suffer from mood, thought, and behavioral disturbances." '
'Zyprexa is no longer referred to as an antipsychotic specifically approved for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (1996) then for short-term bipolar disorder (2000). Instead, sales reps are instructed to persuade primary care physicians to prescribe Zyprexa for "symptoms associated with various mental disorders frequently observed in patients." Since such patients do not meet the diagnostic criteria for which the drug was approved, Lilly's marketing violates federal law.
'Evelyn Pringle has been covering the Zyprexa issue extensively in OpEdNews. "More Zyprexa Postcards From the Edge," February 14, 2007, reveals that a secret Eli Lilly memo, "Diabetes Update," dated July 7, 2003, suggests a strategy for counteracting news of the diabetes risk which threatened sales.
'"Indemnification represents the most meaningful demonstration of confidence in Zyprexa--both with our customers and with our employees," the Update stated. "We must embrace the fact that many physicians are curtailing their use of Zyprexa (particularly in the moderately-ill patient and in the maintenance phase)," the memo said, "solely on the basis of personal fear (of being sued)."
'Pringle translates the comment to mean that company executives were anxious about doctors who might curtail the use of Zyprexa in patients who may not need it because they are no longer psychotic. Lilly's memo suggests that the company should try to convince doctors to keep patients on Zyprexa for life as a maintenance program.'
(This sort of thing is not uncommon. But the only evil is, of course, people voluntarily buying tobacco products because they're worth even the inflated risks claimed.)
She notes that Lilly apparently used this physician indemnification tactic when the truth about the risks of Prozac leaked out from documents that had also been sealed under a court order. The memo states: "Our experience with Prozac, confirms the impact and goodwill of such an initiative."
'However, it is not clear from the memo whether Lilly did in fact indemnify doctors for prescribing Zyprexa. The memo states: "We are investigating the viability of this action, and are preparing a business case analysis for senior management's consideration--ASAP."
'Pringle notes that the memo does make one thing clear; that Eli Lilly knew the plan was improper as evidenced by a comment that the American Medical Association considered indemnification an "inappropriate incentive" to doctors.
'Of further interest, the same memo discussed a plan to pay the National Alliance on Mental Illness millions of dollars to help downplay the news about diabetes and Zyprexa. The memo describes a plan to "mobilize our allies" and provide "NAMI a multimillion dollar grant to stage a national screening" to "help educate physicians and patients on the inherent risks of diabetes--regardless of the antipsychotic."
'The memo confirms that NAMI, an organization that purports to represent the interests of patients diagnosed with a mental disorder and their families, is not only a front group for Eli Lilly--but an accomplice in downplaying lethal drug effects.
'In her latest article (below), Pringle that a letter from Dr Albert Marrero, a psychiatrist at the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department, to Lilly's medical director (November 12, 1999) describes the blood sugar problems occurring specifically with Zyprexa patients: "We have had eight patients out of possibly thirty-five patients on Zyprexa show up with high blood sugars."
'Dr Marrero further informed Lilly that, "Two patients had to be hospitalized due to out of control diabetes....We have certainly never seen this with Haldol, Navane, Risperdal and others to this extent."
'In other words, the psychiatrist indicates that Zyprexa is not only not an improvement over other antipsychotics-he says it's worse than the old or the new. Yet, this drug is Lilly's most profitable mega-seller.'
(So where are all the well-funded public health groups fanatically protecting us all from risks virtually nobody wants or thinks worthwhile?)
'The recent overdose death of 4-year-old, Rebecca Riley, in Massachusetts, demonstrates the dire need to educate the public about the practice of prescribing drugs for unapproved uses and the dangers of prescribing drugs like Zyprexa to children. At 2-and-a-half-years-old, Rebecca was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder and was prescribed Zyprexa's atypical cousin, Seroquel, along with Clonidine, an adult high blood pressure drug, and Depakote, a drug approved to treat adults with epilepsy. None of these drugs were approved for children and they were prescribed in a combination that has never been tested even with adults.
'From age 2 on, Rebecca remained on this daily drug off-label concoction until she was found dead on the floor in her parent's home on December 13, 2006. The autopsy report stated that she died of the "combined effects" of the drugs and that her lungs and heart were damaged by "prolonged abuse of these prescription drugs, rather than one incident."
'Experts say, this case reinforces the assertion that judges have got to quit allowing drug makers to seal documents with court orders that show the side effects of drugs and the illegal conduct of promoting the sale of drugs for unapproved uses.
'With the Zyprexa documents, as soon as the New York Times began running articles about Lilly's off-label marketing scheme and the side effects of Zyprexa, Lilly went to court and got the judge in the underlying litigation to issue a permanent injunction against Mr Gottstein, and other persons who obtained the documents from Mr Gottstein, ordering them to return the documents to the court.'
'The story behind Rebecca Riley's death, gives a clear picture of how blatant the off-label marketing scams have become. After she died, investigators discovered that her 2 siblings, ages 6 and 11, were also fed the same 3 drug cocktail every day and that the parents were on psychiatric medications as well.
'Which means, if not for the disruption by Rebecca's untimely death, this family represented five steady customers for the "mental health industry," with 100% of the costs for doctor's visits and prescriptions paid for by public health care programs.
'Psychotropic drug expert, Dr Ann Blake Tracy, Director, International Coalition for Drug Awareness, and author of "Prozac: Panacea or Pandora?," says, "this is what is referred to as the "Family Discount," when everyone in the family is drugged." And this is the type of tragedy she worries about, Dr Tracy says. "The parents unable to function, the children acting up and unable to function - all due to the effects of the drugs." She states that she would not be surprised to learn that the mother was on psychiatric drugs while she carried Rebecca which also may have caused problems for the child.
'One of the world's leading experts pharmacology experts, former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, Dr David Healy, also maintains that there is no justification for giving these drugs (to) a 2-year-old and "certainly not for the combinations mentioned here," he states.
'Testing a 2-year-old for these mental disorders, he says, can not be done.
Con't: (with deletions)
'Vera Sharav, the Director of the Alliance for Human Research Protections, also believes that the only way to stop the prescribing assault on children is to put the professionals who prescribe the toxic drug cocktails on trial in open court. "Let the public bear witness," she states, "to the proceedings that will demonstrate the absence of scientific-medical evidence to support the widespread misprescribing of harmful drugs for children."
'Kelly Patricia O'Meara, author of, "Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill," says the most important issue raised in the media is the response by the psychiatrist who prescribed the drugs. "Given the known adverse reactions to many of these drugs, and that they are not approved for children," she also says, "the psychiatrist needs to be held responsible."
'As for the behaviors of family members described in the media, Ms O'Meara says, the prescription drugs they were taking could have caused many of the same. "Hostile, violent behavior," she says, "is a possible side effect of many of the mind-altering drugs."
'Dr Healy also notes that it is at least possible that some of the alleged behaviors of the parents could be caused by the drugs they were on. As far as drugging the whole Riley family, he says, there is no mental illness that effects an entire families.'
'The off-label drugging of the Riley children is not an isolated incident. None of the atypicals drugs are approved for children, yet on May 11, 2006, the Associated Press reported that the number of prescriptions written for children had increased 73% over a four year period, according to Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefits manager.
'In addition to Zyprexa, the other atypicals in the same class include Seroquel (AstraZeneca) the drug given to the Riley children, Abilify (Bristol-Myers Squibb); Risperdal (Johnson & Johnson); Geodon (Pfizer); and Clozril (Novartis).
'Dr Timothy Scott, author of, "America Fooled: The Truth about Antidepressants, Antipsychotics and How We've Been Deceived, reports a 2005 study that found there are approximately 30,000 children under 5 on these drugs.
'Overall, child neurologist, Dr Fred Baughman, author of "The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children," reports that 10 million of the 50 million school children in the nation are on one or more psychiatric drugs and states: "This is death by psychiatry."
'Along with Lilly, many of the above drug makers are currently under investigation by Federal and state law enforcement agencies for promoting the atypicals for off-label use. Lawsuits have also been filed to recover the money paid by public health care programs for the actual purchase of the drugs, as well as the cost of medical treatment for patients who developed diabetes and other health problems as a result of taking them.
'While Mr Gottstein and Dr Egilman may have set themselves up for big trouble by releasing the Zyprexa documents to the press; in light of the harm to the public from off-label prescribing, evidenced well by the Riley case, drastic measures were called for and they obviously believed the risks were worth taking.'
' "About two million people worldwide took Zyprexa in 2005, and more than 20 million people in total have taken the drug since its introduction in 1996. Given the sheer number of people taking the drug, there is a strong public interest in having complete information about its potential risks available to mental health professionals, researchers, government regulators, and consumers."
'Underscoring the danger that concealed Zyprexa -related injuries pose for individuals and the public health, on the same day the Judge issued his ruling, the Housel Government Oversight and Investigations Committee held hearings about drug safety. FDA's senior safety officer, Dr. David Graham, testified that the FDA and Eli Lilly knew but failed "for a long time" to inform doctors and the public that Zyprexa (olanzapine) induces diabetes. See: FDA handling of Lilly drug needs probe-scientist, Reuters. Feb 13, 2007
'Furthermore, there is a danger that yesterday's ruling might be interpreted as encouragement rather than deterrent for pharmaceutical companies to engage in illegal marketing practices to promote hazardous drugs. Bloomberg News compares AstraZeneca's marketing and the concealment of the risks of its of its antipsychotic drug, Seroquel, to the Zyprexa marketing strategy. See: AstraZeneca Faces 10,000 Lawsuits Over Seroquel Drug By Margaret Cronin Fisk BLOOMBERG NEWS:'
'Eli Lilly has now paid $1.2 billion to settle more than 28,000 cases from individuals who contended that they developed diabetes or other diseases from taking Zyprexa.'
'The company had global Zyprexa sales of $4.2 billion in 2005, about 29 percent of Lilly's total. Lilly declined to provide sales numbers for the drug in 2006.'
'Gottstein added that "Did I want to get this information in front of the public and the medical profession? Of course. Additional lives may well have been saved." '
'The handling of the Eil Lilly -diabetes Zyprexa lawsuits is appalling. In the first round 8,000 plaintiffs sued for failure to warn about the risks of diabetes--Lilly agreed to a $690 million settlement with a gag imposed on those who were victimized. How can such gag orders be justified???
'In the second round, we're told another 4,000 persons allege they have been injured by this highly toxic drug.
'Secret documents from the first case reveal that Eli Lilly knew about the diabetes risk at least by 1999--but the company and its representatives lied and used deceptive marketing campaigns--Viva Zyprexa--the documents' content was partially laid out in front page news reports in The New York Times.
'So what does a U.S. court do about corporate misconduct? Rather than holding Lilly accountable for its deceptive practices that concealed the evidence, the court is shielding the giant corporation from the revelations contained in its own documents about it sown marketing strategy!
'The court in what seems to us as warped wisdom is chasing after those who are trying to bring the documents to the public arena--let the truth be discovered. Something is warped in this picture. The court is helping Lilly intimidate public advocates by issuing Temporary Mandatory Injuctions.
'See the court injunction and several postings about the Lilly cat-out-bag at [Link] But the Internet is an uncontrolled information highway --you never know where or when the court suppressed documents may be discussed!'
'When secrecy is the price of a legal settlement, wrongdoers hide their mistakes as if they never happened and continue with business as usual. That's what happened in the Lilly case. The thousands of plaintiffs and dozens of lawyers involved in the 2005 settlements kept their part of the bargain, while Lilly continued to sell Zyprexa in huge quantities - a reported $4.2 billion in sales in 2005 - without warning either patients or doctors about the drug's dangers.'
'Courts have the power to grant protective orders only to limit the disclosure of highly personal information and legitimate trade secrets. But when all the lawyers in a case agree, judges often grant protection even if the trade secrets in question show how the product does not work, not how it does. Neither lawyers nor judges should ever be party to such agreements. It is simply unacceptable as a matter of public policy to permit secret deals that conceal evidence of dangers to the public.
'In the Zyprexa cases, the documents eventually were exposed when Alaska attorney James B. Gottstein, working on an entirely unrelated case, subpoenaed the records of one of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses. Gottstein not only used the documents in his lawsuit but, to his great credit, disclosed them to the New York Times and several healthcare groups. Gottstein was almost immediately ordered to return all the documents he had, but the train had left the station: The New York Times published articles about the dangers of Zyprexa, and excerpts from the documents began appearing on the Internet. Within two weeks, with much of the Zyprexa evidence now out in the open, Lilly settled the additional 18,000 cases. Negotiated secrecy, Lilly's primary goal, had become moot.'
'Unfortunately, disclosure is still the exception. But we should have learned our lesson by now. From Zomax and Halcion in the 1980s to shredding Firestone tires and GM gas-tank fires in the 1990s, to Vioxx and Zyprexa today, when lawyers cut secret deals behind the public's back, what we don't know can and does hurt us. The civil justice system belongs to all of us, and no one should be allowed to use it to keep the public in the dark.'
Luckily, smokers usually have a light handy.
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