Showing posts with label bigpharma fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bigpharma fraud. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2018
Antipsychotic Drugs Will Not Avert Delirium Or Dementia Sugar Pill Will Work Better
A recent study major study found that anti-psychotic drugs such as haloperidol branded as Haldol are no more effective than a placebo for treating delirium or dementia. This is a similar study where anti-psychotics are no better than a placebo to avert depression.
Powerful drugs that have been used for decades to treat delirium are ineffective for that purpose are useless according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Many doctors in higher end medical facilities prescribe these drugs in intensive care units and emergency rooms across the nation. Millions worldwide are getting these drugs to combat delirium and they have zero effectiveness. This is why we call this Pharma Fraud. Insurance firms and patients are paying top dollar for products that do not work and have never worked.
Patients with delirium are often confused and incoherent and sometimes can suffer hallucinations. This can lead to long term issues. condition can lead to long-term cognitive problems, including a form of dementia.
We hope patients and insurance companies will sue these firms for fraud. Finally a study which is not stirred for pharma, but for the real truth.
Monday, January 9, 2017
Another Day at the Pharma: Pfizer fined 107 Million in Overbilling
This is a report via Reuters
Britain’s competition watchdog has fined Pfizer a record 84.2 million pounds (US$107 million) for its role in ramping up the cost of an epilepsy drug by as much as 2,600 percent.
In the case of phenytoin sodium capsules, the UK price charged for 100 mg packs of the drug jumped from 2.83 pounds to 67.50 in 2012, before reducing to 54.00 from May 2014.
As a result, annual spending on the capsules by Britain’s National Health Service rose from 2 million pounds in 2012 to about 50 million in 2013. The CMA said UK prices were many times higher than elsewhere in Europe.
Pfizer used to market the medicine under the brand name Epanutin but sold the rights to Flynn, a privately owned British company, in September 2012.
It was then debranded, meaning that it was no longer subject to price regulation, and the price soared.
“The companies deliberately exploited the opportunity offered by debranding to hike up the price for a drug which is relied upon by many thousands of patients,” Philip Marsden, chairman of the CMA’s case decision group, said on Wednesday.
“This is the highest fine the CMA has imposed and it sends out a clear message to the sector that we are determined to crack down on such behavior.”
Pfizer said in a statement it planned to appeal all aspects of the CMA’s verdict.
The U.S. drug maker said the medicine had been loss-making and it was therefore forced to consider whether it could continue supplying it. Pfizer added that the price set by Flynn was actually 25 to 40 percent less than the cost of an equivalent tablet form from another supplier.
Flynn also plans to appeal. Chief executive David Fakes said punishing Flynn for selling phenytoin capsules for less than phenytoin tablets “beggars’ belief”.
Britain’s competition watchdog has fined Pfizer a record 84.2 million pounds (US$107 million) for its role in ramping up the cost of an epilepsy drug by as much as 2,600 percent.
In the case of phenytoin sodium capsules, the UK price charged for 100 mg packs of the drug jumped from 2.83 pounds to 67.50 in 2012, before reducing to 54.00 from May 2014.
As a result, annual spending on the capsules by Britain’s National Health Service rose from 2 million pounds in 2012 to about 50 million in 2013. The CMA said UK prices were many times higher than elsewhere in Europe.
Pfizer used to market the medicine under the brand name Epanutin but sold the rights to Flynn, a privately owned British company, in September 2012.
It was then debranded, meaning that it was no longer subject to price regulation, and the price soared.
“The companies deliberately exploited the opportunity offered by debranding to hike up the price for a drug which is relied upon by many thousands of patients,” Philip Marsden, chairman of the CMA’s case decision group, said on Wednesday.
“This is the highest fine the CMA has imposed and it sends out a clear message to the sector that we are determined to crack down on such behavior.”
Pfizer said in a statement it planned to appeal all aspects of the CMA’s verdict.
The U.S. drug maker said the medicine had been loss-making and it was therefore forced to consider whether it could continue supplying it. Pfizer added that the price set by Flynn was actually 25 to 40 percent less than the cost of an equivalent tablet form from another supplier.
Flynn also plans to appeal. Chief executive David Fakes said punishing Flynn for selling phenytoin capsules for less than phenytoin tablets “beggars’ belief”.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
How Big Pharma sells you drugs you probably don’t need: Celebrities who spread ‘disease awareness’
This is an article from Raw Story by Martha Rosenberg
IT SHOWS HOW PHARMA CREATES THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU OR YOUR CHILD HAS A CONDITION THAT ONLY VERY MINOR FEW PEOPLE MAY HAVE.
IT AID’S PHARMA TO MARKET TO A PERSON DIRECTLY AND MAKES A PERSON FEEL THEY HAVE A DISEASE WHEN THEY DON’T. IT CREATES A PIPELINE FOR FUTURE PATIENTS, WHO DON’T HAVE A DISEASE AND FOR PEOPLE TO SELF DIAGNOSE THEMSELVES.
Did you ever wonder why new medications so often debut right after awareness of the condition they treat increases? It is no coincidence. The tactic is called unbranded advertising and “disease awareness,” and drug companies spend more on it than they do for regular advertising.
This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.
Unbranded disease advertising usually suggests that many more people suffer from a condition than anyone thought—it may even be a “silent epidemic.” It lists symptoms, offers “quizzes” and tries to scare people into “seeing your doctor.” The diseases may not be “made up,” but usually exist in much smaller numbers than is suggested. What disease awareness advertising does not do is tell you the drug that is being marketed for the condition or the company behind the “education.” (Which is why it is called “unbranded.”)
Pharma companies love disease awareness advertising because, unlike direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, risks and warnings of possible drug treatments do not have to be listed. In DTC ads, the risks and warnings are often as long as the sales pitch itself, and sometimes perversely “unsell” the drug even as the viewer is looking at sunsets and puppies.
But not everyone agrees with the omission in unbranded advertising. For example, Aaron Kesselheim, MD, a Harvard professor, told a New York Times reporter in 2013 that an ADHD disease awareness video that supports the safety of stimulant drugs while leaving out their risks is misleading and irresponsible.
Still, disease awareness does much of the heavy lifting in today’s Pharma marketing environment. “Disease awareness offers two primary benefit pathways for the brand that successfully engages it,” says a drug marketing article. It “can provide a lead generation source for later branded outreach” and it “offers an opportunity to inspire patients to some beneficial action or actions.”
Cynics may ask, benefit for whom?
Another drug marketing site agrees. “Disease awareness campaigns have long been fundamental to pharmaceutical and biotechnology marketing and medical teams’ respective communication plans,” it says. Disease awareness is a “tool to ensure that the right patients are prescribed the right treatments” and is “particularly important for diseases in which symptoms are nonspecific, incidence is infrequent, or treatments are not curative. For these diseases, physicians and mid level practitioners are less likely to be familiar with clinical developments or advances in the understanding of diagnostic factors and disease progression.”
Analyzing how successful such disease awareness campaigns are, The Guardian also weighed in:
“Typically, a corporate-sponsored ‘disease awareness’ campaign focuses on a mild psychiatric condition with a large pool of potential sufferers. Companies fund studies that prove the drug’s efficacy in treating the affliction, a necessary step in obtaining FDA approval for a new use, or ‘indication.’ Prominent doctors are enlisted to publicly affirm the malady’s ubiquity, then public-relations firms launch campaigns to promote the new disease, using dramatic statistics from corporate- sponsored studies.”
“Finally, patient groups are recruited to serve as the ‘public face’ for the condition, supplying quotes and compelling stories for the media; many of the groups are heavily subsidized by drugmakers, and some operate directly out of the offices of drug companies’ PR firms.”
“Are You Allergic to People?” and Other Aggressive Campaigns
Are your “allergic” to people? Do you “blush, sweat, shake—even find it hard to breathe,” when trying to socialize? If so, you may have “social anxiety disorder,” said one of the first “disease awareness” campaigns. It proved very successful. Concocted by the slick PR firm Cohn & Wolfe in 1999 to sell the soon-to-be-marketed SSRI antidepressant Paxil, news outlets operated as Pharma stenographers, reporting that as many as 10 million adults suffered from the “social anxiety” epidemic. Who knew?
After “social anxiety” disease awareness campaign—which coincided with the legalization of DTC advertising in the late 1990s—marketing boomed. Soon people began treating their “seasonal allergies,” dry eyes, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD), Restless Legs syndrome, high cholesterol, and of course, depression, like never before. The subjects of disease awareness marketing often had nonspecific symptoms and vague diagnostic criteria.
Do you remember hearing about the many women suffering from “Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder” (HSDD) a few years ago? The disease awareness campaign wassponsored by drug giant Boehringer Ingelheim, to help sell its drug Addyi (flibanserin), which was moving toward FDA approval. The drug was later acquired by Sprout. The marketing included TV personality Lisa Rinna in an aggressive campaign called “Sex Brain Body: Make the Connection.”
Boehringer Ingelheim also wined and dined potential medical supporters, remembers London sex researcher Petra Boynton. “I’ve had two invitations to attend two two-day long ‘training days’ at top London hotels (with an honorarium of £1000 per session),” she wrote on a blog. “My understanding of the aim of these events were to highlight FSD (or more specifically Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) as a problem and inform practitioners about treatment approaches.”
Though she declined to attend, Boehringer Ingelheim also asked Boynton to write a paper for the British Journal of Sexual Medicine. “They had clear instructions about what they wanted me to say and how this would set the scene that HSDD was a prevalent and distressing problem,” she remembers.
Men are not exempt from disease awareness marketing. Low testosterone or “Low T” has been aggressively marketed by Big Pharma, though it occurs rarely, according to experts.
“True instances of testosterone deficiency such as hypogonadism are rare—less than one half of one percent of men have this problem,” Boston University School of Medicine longevity expert Thomas Perls, MD told me in an interview. “Since massive marketing campaigns emerged in the late 1980s claiming that common symptoms like lack of energy, poor sleep, poor libido could be treated with testosterone, the number of men labeled with this disease skyrocketed. The new syndrome of aging-related low testosterone was facilitated by doctors’ organizations that allowed new and much less rigorous and specific definitions of hypogonadism. Some of these consensus panels were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies making and marketing testosterone.”
Nor are the “Low T” products necessarily safe. “The use of testosterone products (androgens) in men outside very limited indications is not a harmless measure,” says an article on Healthy Skepticism:
“Severe adverse effects from inappropriate use of androgens include sodium and water retention, oedema, acne, gynaecomastia, impotence, testicular atrophy, priapism, inhibition of spermatogenesis, degenerative changes in seminiferous tubules, impaired glucose tolerance, hypercalcemia, polycythaemia, decreased clotting factors, increased LDL cholesterol, aggressive behaviour, psychotic symptoms, physical and psychological dependence, withdrawal symptoms etc.”
Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder and Other Diseases Brought to Our “Awareness”
In 2009, CBS News reported that drugmakers had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to raise awareness of fibromyalgia which it called, “a murky illness, helping boost sales of pills recently approved as treatments and drowning out unresolved questions—including whether it’s a real disease at all.”
Eli Lilly and Pfizer had donated more than $6 million to “nonprofit groups for medical conferences and educational campaigns,” reported CBS. While fibromyalgia, like most diseases given such “awareness,” certainly exists, the timing and estimation of how many people “suffer” was totally orchestrated by Pharma and its many patient front-groups.
Like most disease awareness marketing, the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, observed CBS, and “there are no tests to confirm a diagnosis. Many patients also fit the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome and other pain ailments.”
Some diseases given awareness are so rare, they almost appear a satire or a joke. How many people, for example, suffer from the sleep disorders nacrolepsy, Shift Work Sleep Disorder and Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder, the latter almost always only affecting blind people? That has not stopped Pharma from scaring people with symptoms and quizzes to ask their doctors about and setting up unbranded websites to “educate” about the diseases.
For example the unbranded website Wake Up Narcolepsy, says “It can take as long as 10 to 15 years after the first symptoms appear before Narcolepsy is recognized and diagnosed. Many doctors are unfamiliar with Narcolepsy, even though it affects 1 in 2,000 people. Narcolepsy symptoms are like symptoms of other illnesses, such as infections, depression and other sleep disorders.” Narcolepsy can “sometimes be mistaken for a learning problem, seizure and even laziness, especially in school-aged children and teens. When Narcolepsy symptoms are mild, the disorder is even harder to diagnose.” The disease awareness is courtesy of Jazz Pharmaceuticals, not mentioned on the unbranded website, which makes the narcolepsy drug Xyrem that costs up to $35,000 for one year.
Of course, some disease awareness campaigns have been chillingly successful. A 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that more than10,000 two- and three-year-olds in the US are now on the stimulants Ritalin, Adderall and their cousins for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While ADHD to many is a made-up disease, diagnosing children including preschoolers with behavioral and psychiatric conditions was unheard of until Pharma had expensive drugs to treat them. Ten years ago, the nation was sickened by the drug-related death of Rebecca Riley, treated for bipolar disorder, even though she was just four years old.
Adult ADHD is also increasingly given awareness. In 2009, Shire launched a Nationwide Adult ADHD Mobile Awareness Tour, which included a “mobile screening initiative” called the RoADHD Trip (get it?)
The caravan, anchored by “the RoADHD Trip Tractor Trailer,” which turned into a tented area with eight “self-screening stations,” traveled the country, visiting major cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Dallas. In each city, Shire said it was partnering with the Attention Deficit Disorder Association, “a leading adult ADHD patient advocacy organization, in an effort to assist up to 20,000 adults to self-screen for this disorder.” All orchestrated and planned with a non-profit as the front group. It's a sting by any other measure.
Why Unbranded Ads Solve Pharma Problems
It is no secret that the last few years have been very bad for Pharma. The antics of drug “re-pricers” like Martin Shkreli and Valeant Pharmaceuticals who buy old drugs and jack their prices, Pharma companies like Pfizer trying to flee US taxes by merging overseas (even though they live on our taxes), and the emerging evidence of how Pharma contributed to current opioid and heroin addiction problems have made Pharma a disdained industry. Even the American Medical Association (AMA) has declared its opposition to Pharma’s aggressive ways, suggesting limits on DTC drug advertising.
Pharma knows it is unliked, and like other unpopular industries—the chemical industry, seed companies like Monsanto, the gas and oil industry complex, Wall Street—it fears grassroots comments and Internet feedback which it cannot buy off.
“Adverse event reporting has been a concern for pharma since the advent of social media,” admits an article on Medical Marketing and Media addressing how the industry faces serious “public distrust” on social media. Rather than get defensive over “adverse reports” from patients or fight back, a marketing expert quoted in the article suggests “the way to earn trust is to show empathy, speak in a way that is credible to the patient and remember that social media is a relationship.” This sounds a lot like the “GMO Answers” approach that Monsanto and other seed giants use to address fears people have over genetically modified crops—using industry operatives to spin answers to questions.
Another Pharma marketer agrees, cautioning not to let bad patient buzz overshadow “the work you’ve done online….The vocal minority now becomes the published majority, and that becomes the experience that everyone attaches themselves to….Putting your head in the sand and ignoring these people is the wrong way to think about how people are experiencing your brand or your content.”
In addition to using industry shills, says the marketer, neutralize angry patients by encouraging them to tell their own stories—a tactic used by many Pharma-funded disease awareness sites.
In March I wrote in The Influence about the new campaign from PhRMA, the industry’s trade group, to defend outrageous drug prices: “Hope to Cures.” Like disease awareness marketing, the campaign depicts patient—like “Theresa,” diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 57, and “Charis,” suffering from ankylosing spondylitis at age 29—up close and personal. The profiles are intentionally tear-jerking, to show the good Pharma does and shame anyone who thinks it is profiteering.
The Celebrities Who Spread Disease Awareness
In addition to patient profiles, Pharma has used celebrity endorsements to sell drugs and raise disease awareness. Television personalities Joan Lunden and baseball player Mike Piazza pushed the allergy pill Claritin. Dorothy Hamill and the track star then known as Bruce Jenner pushed the pain pill Vioxx, which caused 27,785 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths.
But when actress Kathleen Turner appeared on CNN, she simply shared her battle with rheumatoid arthritis for disease awareness, not mentioning the arthritis drug she was raising awareness for or the manufacturers who were funding her, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. Nor did TV talk show host Meredith Vieira mention any Merck bone products while “educating” women on the importance of strong bones in a national campaign which offered—any guesses?–free bone density screening. Sally Field, known as the family matriarch in the TV drama Brothers and Sisters, was the face of the bone disease awareness risks for women, not afraid to name the drug Boniva. “You have only one body and one life,” said Field in the ads which also claimed the drug “reversed” one loss. Since Vieira and Field raised “awareness” about the risk of bone thinning, the class of drugs they promoted—called bisphosphonates—has been linked to cancer, relentless pain, heart problems, jaw necrosis and the very fractures they were supposed to prevent.
More recently, tennis star Monica Seles raised awareness for “binge eating disorder,” actress Marcia Cross promoted awareness of migraine headaches and race car driver Danica Patrick promoted awareness of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Singer LeAnn Rimes has also promoted awareness of eczema and Paula Deen awareness of diabetes no doubt enabled by some of her rich recipes.
How to Get Nearer the Truth
One of the most dangerous parts of disease awareness is the lack of clear risks and warnings for the drugs that are implicitly promoted. We hear how Pharma valiantly battled patients’ diseases but nothing about the side effects (and prices) of the drugs in question.
One of the best sites to get the other side of the story is askapatient.com, a Webby award-winning, patient-driven site that lets you “Learn from the experience of real people who have taken drug treatments” and “Share your side effects or success stories” free from Pharma influence. Patients can read the thousands of entries about an individual drug, see a summary of effects for a drug based on FDA Medwatch data, and search for specific side effects.
Another site that quickly lets you see a drug’s side effects without Pharma influence and how frequent the side effects occur is HealthBee. “The short history behind the site was an attempt to figure out how prevalent some of the side effects of certain drugs that family members were taking were,” the developers told me. Since nothing seemed to exist and information was “very limited and lacking” the founders created the site themselves in 2013.
Finally, Worst Pills, published by the well respected Public Citizen, is the granddaddy of non-Pharma-influenced drug information sites. For a small subscription fee, patients can learn about the drugs they are taking or might take, as well as reading important reported stories like “Is XARELTO Really the ‘Right Move’ for Patients With Blood Clots or Risk for Stroke?” and “The Best Drug for Severe Acute Low Back Pain.”
The two big caveats to keep in mind about disease awareness advertising are: You probably don’t have the condition advertised; and if you do, the drug treatment marketed for it may have many buried risks.
IT SHOWS HOW PHARMA CREATES THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU OR YOUR CHILD HAS A CONDITION THAT ONLY VERY MINOR FEW PEOPLE MAY HAVE.
IT AID’S PHARMA TO MARKET TO A PERSON DIRECTLY AND MAKES A PERSON FEEL THEY HAVE A DISEASE WHEN THEY DON’T. IT CREATES A PIPELINE FOR FUTURE PATIENTS, WHO DON’T HAVE A DISEASE AND FOR PEOPLE TO SELF DIAGNOSE THEMSELVES.
Did you ever wonder why new medications so often debut right after awareness of the condition they treat increases? It is no coincidence. The tactic is called unbranded advertising and “disease awareness,” and drug companies spend more on it than they do for regular advertising.
This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.
Unbranded disease advertising usually suggests that many more people suffer from a condition than anyone thought—it may even be a “silent epidemic.” It lists symptoms, offers “quizzes” and tries to scare people into “seeing your doctor.” The diseases may not be “made up,” but usually exist in much smaller numbers than is suggested. What disease awareness advertising does not do is tell you the drug that is being marketed for the condition or the company behind the “education.” (Which is why it is called “unbranded.”)
Pharma companies love disease awareness advertising because, unlike direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, risks and warnings of possible drug treatments do not have to be listed. In DTC ads, the risks and warnings are often as long as the sales pitch itself, and sometimes perversely “unsell” the drug even as the viewer is looking at sunsets and puppies.
But not everyone agrees with the omission in unbranded advertising. For example, Aaron Kesselheim, MD, a Harvard professor, told a New York Times reporter in 2013 that an ADHD disease awareness video that supports the safety of stimulant drugs while leaving out their risks is misleading and irresponsible.
Still, disease awareness does much of the heavy lifting in today’s Pharma marketing environment. “Disease awareness offers two primary benefit pathways for the brand that successfully engages it,” says a drug marketing article. It “can provide a lead generation source for later branded outreach” and it “offers an opportunity to inspire patients to some beneficial action or actions.”
Cynics may ask, benefit for whom?
Another drug marketing site agrees. “Disease awareness campaigns have long been fundamental to pharmaceutical and biotechnology marketing and medical teams’ respective communication plans,” it says. Disease awareness is a “tool to ensure that the right patients are prescribed the right treatments” and is “particularly important for diseases in which symptoms are nonspecific, incidence is infrequent, or treatments are not curative. For these diseases, physicians and mid level practitioners are less likely to be familiar with clinical developments or advances in the understanding of diagnostic factors and disease progression.”
Analyzing how successful such disease awareness campaigns are, The Guardian also weighed in:
“Typically, a corporate-sponsored ‘disease awareness’ campaign focuses on a mild psychiatric condition with a large pool of potential sufferers. Companies fund studies that prove the drug’s efficacy in treating the affliction, a necessary step in obtaining FDA approval for a new use, or ‘indication.’ Prominent doctors are enlisted to publicly affirm the malady’s ubiquity, then public-relations firms launch campaigns to promote the new disease, using dramatic statistics from corporate- sponsored studies.”
“Finally, patient groups are recruited to serve as the ‘public face’ for the condition, supplying quotes and compelling stories for the media; many of the groups are heavily subsidized by drugmakers, and some operate directly out of the offices of drug companies’ PR firms.”
“Are You Allergic to People?” and Other Aggressive Campaigns
Are your “allergic” to people? Do you “blush, sweat, shake—even find it hard to breathe,” when trying to socialize? If so, you may have “social anxiety disorder,” said one of the first “disease awareness” campaigns. It proved very successful. Concocted by the slick PR firm Cohn & Wolfe in 1999 to sell the soon-to-be-marketed SSRI antidepressant Paxil, news outlets operated as Pharma stenographers, reporting that as many as 10 million adults suffered from the “social anxiety” epidemic. Who knew?
After “social anxiety” disease awareness campaign—which coincided with the legalization of DTC advertising in the late 1990s—marketing boomed. Soon people began treating their “seasonal allergies,” dry eyes, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD), Restless Legs syndrome, high cholesterol, and of course, depression, like never before. The subjects of disease awareness marketing often had nonspecific symptoms and vague diagnostic criteria.
Do you remember hearing about the many women suffering from “Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder” (HSDD) a few years ago? The disease awareness campaign wassponsored by drug giant Boehringer Ingelheim, to help sell its drug Addyi (flibanserin), which was moving toward FDA approval. The drug was later acquired by Sprout. The marketing included TV personality Lisa Rinna in an aggressive campaign called “Sex Brain Body: Make the Connection.”
Boehringer Ingelheim also wined and dined potential medical supporters, remembers London sex researcher Petra Boynton. “I’ve had two invitations to attend two two-day long ‘training days’ at top London hotels (with an honorarium of £1000 per session),” she wrote on a blog. “My understanding of the aim of these events were to highlight FSD (or more specifically Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) as a problem and inform practitioners about treatment approaches.”
Though she declined to attend, Boehringer Ingelheim also asked Boynton to write a paper for the British Journal of Sexual Medicine. “They had clear instructions about what they wanted me to say and how this would set the scene that HSDD was a prevalent and distressing problem,” she remembers.
Men are not exempt from disease awareness marketing. Low testosterone or “Low T” has been aggressively marketed by Big Pharma, though it occurs rarely, according to experts.
“True instances of testosterone deficiency such as hypogonadism are rare—less than one half of one percent of men have this problem,” Boston University School of Medicine longevity expert Thomas Perls, MD told me in an interview. “Since massive marketing campaigns emerged in the late 1980s claiming that common symptoms like lack of energy, poor sleep, poor libido could be treated with testosterone, the number of men labeled with this disease skyrocketed. The new syndrome of aging-related low testosterone was facilitated by doctors’ organizations that allowed new and much less rigorous and specific definitions of hypogonadism. Some of these consensus panels were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies making and marketing testosterone.”
Nor are the “Low T” products necessarily safe. “The use of testosterone products (androgens) in men outside very limited indications is not a harmless measure,” says an article on Healthy Skepticism:
“Severe adverse effects from inappropriate use of androgens include sodium and water retention, oedema, acne, gynaecomastia, impotence, testicular atrophy, priapism, inhibition of spermatogenesis, degenerative changes in seminiferous tubules, impaired glucose tolerance, hypercalcemia, polycythaemia, decreased clotting factors, increased LDL cholesterol, aggressive behaviour, psychotic symptoms, physical and psychological dependence, withdrawal symptoms etc.”
Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder and Other Diseases Brought to Our “Awareness”
In 2009, CBS News reported that drugmakers had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to raise awareness of fibromyalgia which it called, “a murky illness, helping boost sales of pills recently approved as treatments and drowning out unresolved questions—including whether it’s a real disease at all.”
Eli Lilly and Pfizer had donated more than $6 million to “nonprofit groups for medical conferences and educational campaigns,” reported CBS. While fibromyalgia, like most diseases given such “awareness,” certainly exists, the timing and estimation of how many people “suffer” was totally orchestrated by Pharma and its many patient front-groups.
Like most disease awareness marketing, the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, observed CBS, and “there are no tests to confirm a diagnosis. Many patients also fit the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome and other pain ailments.”
Some diseases given awareness are so rare, they almost appear a satire or a joke. How many people, for example, suffer from the sleep disorders nacrolepsy, Shift Work Sleep Disorder and Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder, the latter almost always only affecting blind people? That has not stopped Pharma from scaring people with symptoms and quizzes to ask their doctors about and setting up unbranded websites to “educate” about the diseases.
For example the unbranded website Wake Up Narcolepsy, says “It can take as long as 10 to 15 years after the first symptoms appear before Narcolepsy is recognized and diagnosed. Many doctors are unfamiliar with Narcolepsy, even though it affects 1 in 2,000 people. Narcolepsy symptoms are like symptoms of other illnesses, such as infections, depression and other sleep disorders.” Narcolepsy can “sometimes be mistaken for a learning problem, seizure and even laziness, especially in school-aged children and teens. When Narcolepsy symptoms are mild, the disorder is even harder to diagnose.” The disease awareness is courtesy of Jazz Pharmaceuticals, not mentioned on the unbranded website, which makes the narcolepsy drug Xyrem that costs up to $35,000 for one year.
Of course, some disease awareness campaigns have been chillingly successful. A 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that more than10,000 two- and three-year-olds in the US are now on the stimulants Ritalin, Adderall and their cousins for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). While ADHD to many is a made-up disease, diagnosing children including preschoolers with behavioral and psychiatric conditions was unheard of until Pharma had expensive drugs to treat them. Ten years ago, the nation was sickened by the drug-related death of Rebecca Riley, treated for bipolar disorder, even though she was just four years old.
Adult ADHD is also increasingly given awareness. In 2009, Shire launched a Nationwide Adult ADHD Mobile Awareness Tour, which included a “mobile screening initiative” called the RoADHD Trip (get it?)
The caravan, anchored by “the RoADHD Trip Tractor Trailer,” which turned into a tented area with eight “self-screening stations,” traveled the country, visiting major cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Dallas. In each city, Shire said it was partnering with the Attention Deficit Disorder Association, “a leading adult ADHD patient advocacy organization, in an effort to assist up to 20,000 adults to self-screen for this disorder.” All orchestrated and planned with a non-profit as the front group. It's a sting by any other measure.
Why Unbranded Ads Solve Pharma Problems
It is no secret that the last few years have been very bad for Pharma. The antics of drug “re-pricers” like Martin Shkreli and Valeant Pharmaceuticals who buy old drugs and jack their prices, Pharma companies like Pfizer trying to flee US taxes by merging overseas (even though they live on our taxes), and the emerging evidence of how Pharma contributed to current opioid and heroin addiction problems have made Pharma a disdained industry. Even the American Medical Association (AMA) has declared its opposition to Pharma’s aggressive ways, suggesting limits on DTC drug advertising.
Pharma knows it is unliked, and like other unpopular industries—the chemical industry, seed companies like Monsanto, the gas and oil industry complex, Wall Street—it fears grassroots comments and Internet feedback which it cannot buy off.
“Adverse event reporting has been a concern for pharma since the advent of social media,” admits an article on Medical Marketing and Media addressing how the industry faces serious “public distrust” on social media. Rather than get defensive over “adverse reports” from patients or fight back, a marketing expert quoted in the article suggests “the way to earn trust is to show empathy, speak in a way that is credible to the patient and remember that social media is a relationship.” This sounds a lot like the “GMO Answers” approach that Monsanto and other seed giants use to address fears people have over genetically modified crops—using industry operatives to spin answers to questions.
Another Pharma marketer agrees, cautioning not to let bad patient buzz overshadow “the work you’ve done online….The vocal minority now becomes the published majority, and that becomes the experience that everyone attaches themselves to….Putting your head in the sand and ignoring these people is the wrong way to think about how people are experiencing your brand or your content.”
In addition to using industry shills, says the marketer, neutralize angry patients by encouraging them to tell their own stories—a tactic used by many Pharma-funded disease awareness sites.
In March I wrote in The Influence about the new campaign from PhRMA, the industry’s trade group, to defend outrageous drug prices: “Hope to Cures.” Like disease awareness marketing, the campaign depicts patient—like “Theresa,” diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 57, and “Charis,” suffering from ankylosing spondylitis at age 29—up close and personal. The profiles are intentionally tear-jerking, to show the good Pharma does and shame anyone who thinks it is profiteering.
The Celebrities Who Spread Disease Awareness
In addition to patient profiles, Pharma has used celebrity endorsements to sell drugs and raise disease awareness. Television personalities Joan Lunden and baseball player Mike Piazza pushed the allergy pill Claritin. Dorothy Hamill and the track star then known as Bruce Jenner pushed the pain pill Vioxx, which caused 27,785 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths.
But when actress Kathleen Turner appeared on CNN, she simply shared her battle with rheumatoid arthritis for disease awareness, not mentioning the arthritis drug she was raising awareness for or the manufacturers who were funding her, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. Nor did TV talk show host Meredith Vieira mention any Merck bone products while “educating” women on the importance of strong bones in a national campaign which offered—any guesses?–free bone density screening. Sally Field, known as the family matriarch in the TV drama Brothers and Sisters, was the face of the bone disease awareness risks for women, not afraid to name the drug Boniva. “You have only one body and one life,” said Field in the ads which also claimed the drug “reversed” one loss. Since Vieira and Field raised “awareness” about the risk of bone thinning, the class of drugs they promoted—called bisphosphonates—has been linked to cancer, relentless pain, heart problems, jaw necrosis and the very fractures they were supposed to prevent.
More recently, tennis star Monica Seles raised awareness for “binge eating disorder,” actress Marcia Cross promoted awareness of migraine headaches and race car driver Danica Patrick promoted awareness of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Singer LeAnn Rimes has also promoted awareness of eczema and Paula Deen awareness of diabetes no doubt enabled by some of her rich recipes.
How to Get Nearer the Truth
One of the most dangerous parts of disease awareness is the lack of clear risks and warnings for the drugs that are implicitly promoted. We hear how Pharma valiantly battled patients’ diseases but nothing about the side effects (and prices) of the drugs in question.
One of the best sites to get the other side of the story is askapatient.com, a Webby award-winning, patient-driven site that lets you “Learn from the experience of real people who have taken drug treatments” and “Share your side effects or success stories” free from Pharma influence. Patients can read the thousands of entries about an individual drug, see a summary of effects for a drug based on FDA Medwatch data, and search for specific side effects.
Another site that quickly lets you see a drug’s side effects without Pharma influence and how frequent the side effects occur is HealthBee. “The short history behind the site was an attempt to figure out how prevalent some of the side effects of certain drugs that family members were taking were,” the developers told me. Since nothing seemed to exist and information was “very limited and lacking” the founders created the site themselves in 2013.
Finally, Worst Pills, published by the well respected Public Citizen, is the granddaddy of non-Pharma-influenced drug information sites. For a small subscription fee, patients can learn about the drugs they are taking or might take, as well as reading important reported stories like “Is XARELTO Really the ‘Right Move’ for Patients With Blood Clots or Risk for Stroke?” and “The Best Drug for Severe Acute Low Back Pain.”
The two big caveats to keep in mind about disease awareness advertising are: You probably don’t have the condition advertised; and if you do, the drug treatment marketed for it may have many buried risks.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Valient Pharmaceuticals Under Pressure for Fraud and Price Hiking.
Valient Pharmaceuticals which is managed by CEO Michael Pearson has been accused of accounting fraud to cover its books from auditors. The company moved operations to Canada previously to take advantage of more favorable foreign tax rate. This is what is called reverse inversion.
Regarding the fraud. Citron Research said that a recent lawsuit is evidence that Valeant is creating invoices "to deceive the auditors and book revenue."
“Valeant/Philidor have created an entire network of phantom captive pharmacies” to create fake sales of drugs or to avoid scrutiny from auditors, Citron said.
R&O Pharmacy has sued Valeant. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in California, R&O said it had gotten a letter from Valeant’s general counsel on Sept. 4 indicating that it owed Valeant more than $69 million. It had never received a previous invoice from Valeant for any amount.
Valeant's price increase history became a major focus. It has been accused of price increases of some of its drugs from 2013 to 2015. The company spokesman responded to the charges by saying Valeant's company spokesperson said "Our duty is to our shareholders and to maximize value"
These are just some glaring examples of pharmaceutical fraud. In Valient’s case there are multiple incidences, but we have shown this is the case with pharmaceutical companies. They do not care about the consumer. If people died using their drugs so what. It is all about money. Over charge, make profits people die they don’t care.
Regarding the fraud. Citron Research said that a recent lawsuit is evidence that Valeant is creating invoices "to deceive the auditors and book revenue."
“Valeant/Philidor have created an entire network of phantom captive pharmacies” to create fake sales of drugs or to avoid scrutiny from auditors, Citron said.
R&O Pharmacy has sued Valeant. In a lawsuit filed in federal court in California, R&O said it had gotten a letter from Valeant’s general counsel on Sept. 4 indicating that it owed Valeant more than $69 million. It had never received a previous invoice from Valeant for any amount.
Valeant's price increase history became a major focus. It has been accused of price increases of some of its drugs from 2013 to 2015. The company spokesman responded to the charges by saying Valeant's company spokesperson said "Our duty is to our shareholders and to maximize value"
These are just some glaring examples of pharmaceutical fraud. In Valient’s case there are multiple incidences, but we have shown this is the case with pharmaceutical companies. They do not care about the consumer. If people died using their drugs so what. It is all about money. Over charge, make profits people die they don’t care.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Martin Shkreli Pharma CEO Arrested on Securities Fraud
Martin Shkreli became infamous raising the price of a life-saving pill by 4,000 percent, has been recently arrested on charges of security fraud, according to news reports. Last year he raised the price of Daraprim which is a drug used to treat toxoplasmosis. It is an issue for newborns newborns and HIV patients and the price went from $1,130 to $63,000.
Shkreli is a symbol of Wall Street greed, but also of Big Pharma fraud. He was arrested on securities fraud, but he is an example of the pricing fraud and the penchant for Big Pharma to evade taxes by being bought by smaller overseas pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma companies make drugs that don’t work at all, or they have side effects of suicide or mania (campus and mall mass murders). Big Pharma is ripe with fraud. We have posted where pharmaceutical companies are being fined for marketing drugs for uses they have not been approved for.
Critics have labeled Shkreli a "putz," a "psychopath" and "Big Pharma's Biggest A--." The Chicago Tribune reported that Congress called him out on it. Hillary Clinton tore into Shkreli. Bernie Sanders rejected a donation from America's most unpopular businessman. Even Donald Trump called Shkreli a "spoiled brat."
The Tribune further reported Shkreli did not do his reputation any favors by calling a journalist a "moron," quoting defiant rap lyrics on Twitter and defending the price-hike as a "great business decision." "Our shareholders expect us to make as much as money as possible," he said during a health industry summit earlier this month, dressed nonchalantly in a hooded sweatshirt and sneakers. "That's the ugly, dirty truth." He also promised to lower the price of Daraprim but reportedly never did.
The price of Daraprim has not gone down. The end result of all this is that pharmaceutical companies can not be trusted. They are full of creeps, criminals, and unapologetic killers. They produce drugs that will kill you. Politicians only speak out against these issues when they are running for office or if a gun was used while a young adult blasts his school mates on campus. Many of these pharmaceutical companies are advised by psychiatrist drug pushers. The entire pharmaceutical industry just stinks with fraud, crime, and it is directly connected to death.
As the saying goes the certainties in life are birth, death and taxes. Another certainty is pharma death and fraud.
Shkreli is a symbol of Wall Street greed, but also of Big Pharma fraud. He was arrested on securities fraud, but he is an example of the pricing fraud and the penchant for Big Pharma to evade taxes by being bought by smaller overseas pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma companies make drugs that don’t work at all, or they have side effects of suicide or mania (campus and mall mass murders). Big Pharma is ripe with fraud. We have posted where pharmaceutical companies are being fined for marketing drugs for uses they have not been approved for.
Critics have labeled Shkreli a "putz," a "psychopath" and "Big Pharma's Biggest A--." The Chicago Tribune reported that Congress called him out on it. Hillary Clinton tore into Shkreli. Bernie Sanders rejected a donation from America's most unpopular businessman. Even Donald Trump called Shkreli a "spoiled brat."
The Tribune further reported Shkreli did not do his reputation any favors by calling a journalist a "moron," quoting defiant rap lyrics on Twitter and defending the price-hike as a "great business decision." "Our shareholders expect us to make as much as money as possible," he said during a health industry summit earlier this month, dressed nonchalantly in a hooded sweatshirt and sneakers. "That's the ugly, dirty truth." He also promised to lower the price of Daraprim but reportedly never did.
The price of Daraprim has not gone down. The end result of all this is that pharmaceutical companies can not be trusted. They are full of creeps, criminals, and unapologetic killers. They produce drugs that will kill you. Politicians only speak out against these issues when they are running for office or if a gun was used while a young adult blasts his school mates on campus. Many of these pharmaceutical companies are advised by psychiatrist drug pushers. The entire pharmaceutical industry just stinks with fraud, crime, and it is directly connected to death.
As the saying goes the certainties in life are birth, death and taxes. Another certainty is pharma death and fraud.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Big Pharma executive Kills Son with Xanax and Ambien and Only Gets Manslaughter
A millionaire prior Big Pharma executive was recently found guilty of manslaughter in a NY Court. Gigi Jordan fatally drugged her developmentally disabled son in a luxury New York Hotel. Recently CNN reported the court proceedings on how Gigi Jordan carried out the killing. “Little Jude Mirra's vocabulary was limited. He typed on a BlackBerry to communicate with her.
"We were typing throughout some period of time. We were saying goodbye to each other," Jordan told the Manhattan jury on Thursday during her second-degree murder trial. She began to cry.
"At some point, I put the pills together," she recalled. "I gave him the pills."
"Which drugs did you give him more of?" defense lawyer Allan Brenner asked.
"A lot more of the Ambien," she said. "I gave him more Xanax, but the Ambien is the one I gave him the most of. I gave him Hydrocodone which were large. I was drinking a vodka orange and there was a little left. I broke up the pill and put it into the juice mixed with vodka." end CNN article.
Mrs. Jordan was charged with murder but got manslaughter and the jury accepted the defense argument that Gigi Jordan acted out of fear for her life. She felt one of her ex-husbands would kill her and that would leave her son alone and susceptible to abuse.
Yet we find out that she is reportedly worth $100 million. With that amount of money can’t you arrange for a guardian to assist you? One can easily protect a child with $100 million in the bank. Additionally, This act was premeditated as she wrote a suicide note and had thousands of pills throughout the hotel room. Pharmaceutical executives are used to death, as they constantly prescribe drugs that don’t work or who side effects will cause suicide. Our opinion is that they don’t value human life. They simply don’t care if you or your child dies because of their drugs. They just market happy people on their drugs. It is a profession of fraud and crime.
"We were typing throughout some period of time. We were saying goodbye to each other," Jordan told the Manhattan jury on Thursday during her second-degree murder trial. She began to cry.
"At some point, I put the pills together," she recalled. "I gave him the pills."
"Which drugs did you give him more of?" defense lawyer Allan Brenner asked.
"A lot more of the Ambien," she said. "I gave him more Xanax, but the Ambien is the one I gave him the most of. I gave him Hydrocodone which were large. I was drinking a vodka orange and there was a little left. I broke up the pill and put it into the juice mixed with vodka." end CNN article.
Mrs. Jordan was charged with murder but got manslaughter and the jury accepted the defense argument that Gigi Jordan acted out of fear for her life. She felt one of her ex-husbands would kill her and that would leave her son alone and susceptible to abuse.
Yet we find out that she is reportedly worth $100 million. With that amount of money can’t you arrange for a guardian to assist you? One can easily protect a child with $100 million in the bank. Additionally, This act was premeditated as she wrote a suicide note and had thousands of pills throughout the hotel room. Pharmaceutical executives are used to death, as they constantly prescribe drugs that don’t work or who side effects will cause suicide. Our opinion is that they don’t value human life. They simply don’t care if you or your child dies because of their drugs. They just market happy people on their drugs. It is a profession of fraud and crime.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Who has the Number One U.S. Ranking in Criminal Fraud Cases? BigPharma of Course
This is a portion of the New York Times article Oct. 2nd 2010 by Duff Wilson “Side Effect may include Lawsuits”.
The new generation of antipsychotics has also become the single biggest target of the False Claims Act, a federal law once largely aimed at fraud among military contractors. Every major company selling the drugs Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson has either settled recent government cases for hundreds of millions of dollars or is currently under investigation for possible health care fraud.
Two of the settlements, involving charges of illegal marketing, set records last year for the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations. One involved Eli Lilly’s antipsychotic, Zyprexa; the other involved a guilty plea for Pfizer’s marketing of a pain pill, Bextra. In the Bextra case, the government also charged Pfizer with illegally marketing another antipsychotic, Geodon; Pfizer settled that part of the claim for $301 million, without admitting any wrongdoing.
The companies all say their antipsychotics are safe and effective in treating the conditions for which the Food and Drug Administration has approved them — mostly, schizophrenia and bipolar mania and say they adhere to tight ethical guidelines in sales practices. The drug makers also say that there is a large population of patients who still haven’t taken the drugs but could benefit from them.
AstraZeneca, which markets Seroquel, the top-selling antipsychotic since 2005, says it developed such drugs because they have fewer side effects than older versions.
“It’s a drug that’s been studied in multiple clinical trials in various indications,” says Dr. Howard Hutchinson, AstraZeneca’s chief medical officer. “Getting these patients to be functioning members of society has a tremendous benefit in terms of their overall well-being and how they look at themselves, and to get that benefit, the patients are willing to accept some level of side effects.”
The industry continues to market antipsychotics aggressively, leading analysts to question how drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for about 1 percent of the population have become the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest sellers despite recent crackdowns.
“It’s the money,” says Dr. Jerome L. Avorn, a Harvard medical professor and researcher. “When you’re selling $1 billion a year or more of a drug, it’s very tempting for a company to just ignore the traffic ticket and keep speeding.”
Contentions that the new drugs are superior have been “greatly exaggerated,” says Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University. Such assertions, he says, “may have been encouraged by an overly expectant community of clinicians and patients eager to believe in the power of new medications.”
“At the same time,” he adds, “the aggressive marketing of these drugs may have contributed to this enhanced perception of their effectiveness in the absence of empirical evidence.”
Others agree. “They sold the story they’re more safe, when they aren’t,” says Robert Whitaker, a journalist who has written two books about psychiatric medicines. “They had to cover up the problems. Right from the start, we got this false story.” End of NYTimes exerpt.
The antidepressant pharmaceutical industry takes in $14.6 Billion in revenue selling these drugs that don’t work. If a firm is taking in this type of money it is easy to settle multi-million dollar fraud lawsuits. The media, government, and medical industry are all working together to cover up the facts that antidepressants don’t work at all so the public is just dumbed down and uninformed on the subject. We commend the NYTimes for doing the research for this article. A truely ethical and independent FDA could stop this madness.
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