The Center for Public Integrity has a new report on Washington’s largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry. Do you think the lobbyists would target the majority if it didn’t do any good? Let’s face it, they are bought and paid for, no matter who they are. Democrats, Republicans……. they’re all bought and paid for. From the report:

Full report here

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Some facts and figures regarding the high costs of filling today’s prescriptions:

Source: USA TODAY/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll of 1,695 adults nationwide, conducted by ICR, Jan. 3-23. Margin of sampling error, +/-3 percentage points.

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By MARTIGA LOHN
The Associated Press

Now we have to be concerned about doctors and pharmacists being corrupt. HOLY JEEZ! - JS

ST. PAUL, Minn. - A groundbreaking Minnesota law is shining a rare light into the big money that drug companies spend on members of state advisory panels who help select which drugs are used in Medicaid programs for the poor and disabled.

Those panels, most comprised of physicians, hold great sway over the $28 billion spent on drugs each year for Medicaid patients nationwide. But aside from Minnesota, only Vermont and Maine require drug companies to report payments to doctors for lectures, consulting, research and other services.

An Associated Press review of records in Minnesota found that a doctor and a pharmacist on the eight-member state panel simultaneously got big checks - more than $350,000 to one - from pharmaceutical companies for speaking about their products.

The two members said the money did not influence their work on the panel, and the lack of recorded votes in meeting minutes makes it difficult to track any link between the payments and policy.

But ethical experts said the Minnesota data raise questions about the possibility of similar financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and advisers in other states.

“In the absence of disclosure laws, there’s certainly no way to know,” said Jack Hoadley, a research professor specializing in Medicaid at Georgetown University in Washington. “There are a lot of physicians in general who have at least some contract or grant funding out of pharmaceutical companies, and additional (who) do speaking engagements.”

read more HERE

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By ANDREW TAYLOR

WASHINGTON - The House passed legislation Thursday effectively permitting the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from places such as Canada, Australia and Europe.

The move came as lawmakers passed a $91 billion spending measure funding farm subsidies and nutrition programs for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

The bill, passed by a 237-18 vote, faces a promised veto from President Bush over its price tag, and the administration also opposes the drug importation provision.

The sprawling measure is the final domestic spending bill to pass the House. It contains almost $1 billion more than requested by Bush. But the overall measure is more than $10 billion below comparable costs for the current budget year because it does not contain farm disaster aid and reflects lower crop subsidy costs due to the good farm economy.

The administration “strongly opposes” the drug provision, which would effectively permit individuals, wholesalers and pharmacists to import lower cost U.S.-made and FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.

The White House says there is no system in place to protect consumers from counterfeit or unsafe drugs, but an administration policy statement stops short of an outright veto threat.

“I understand the intention to lower drug prices to the seniors, that is critically important,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich. “What we’re doing is throwing open the gates to every (drug) counterfeiter in the world.”

A move supported by drug companies to strike the drug importation provisions from the bill was defeated 283-146.

read more HERE

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By Amy Goldstein and Carrie Johnson
Washington Post

The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to slow down, the prosecutor told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke, testified that he was at home the evening of Oct. 24 when he received the call on his cellphone from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and one of the Justice aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year.

Brownlee settled the case anyway. Eight days later, his name appeared on a list compiled by Elston of prosecutors that officials had suggested be fired.

Brownlee ultimately kept his job. But as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales confronts withering criticism over the dismissals, the episode in the OxyContin case provides fresh evidence of efforts by senior officials in the department’s headquarters to sway the work of U.S. attorneys’ offices.

Justice Department officials said it was not unusual for senior members to weigh in on major criminal cases, and a spokesman, Dean Boyd, said the department “encourages healthy internal debate and discussion on complex cases like this one.”

read more HERE

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By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer

The popularity of the morning-after pill Plan B has surged in the year since the federal government approved the sale of the controversial emergency contraceptive without a prescription.

Plan B sales have doubled since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the switch for women 18 and older last August, rising from about $40 million a year to what will probably be close to $80 million for 2007, according to Barr Pharmaceuticals, which makes Plan B.

Last August, federal regulators approved the over-the-counter sale of the emergency contraceptive Plan B to women 18 and older.

The sharp rise was hailed by women’s health and family-planning advocates, who say it illustrates the value of easing access to birth control to help prevent unwanted pregnancies.

“This is exactly what we hoped would happen,” said Susan F. Wood of the George Washington University School of Public Health. As assistant commissioner for women’s health and director of the Office of Women’s Health at the FDA, Wood pushed for the switch. “What we’re seeing is women who needed this product now finally having access to it. For a woman in that position, it can make a real difference in her life.”

But conservative groups that fought the change say they are disturbed by the surging use.

“This is very concerning,” said Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council, which is among several groups suing the FDA to reverse the decision. “We think this is putting women’s health at risk.”

read more at The Washington Post

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By CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN
The New York Times
h/t to Virginia

The young woman in the American Cancer Society advertisement holds up a photograph of a smiling blonde. “My sister accidentally killed herself. She died of skin cancer,” reads the headline.

The public service announcement, financed by the sunscreen maker Neutrogena, is running in 15 women’s magazines this summer. It warns readers that “left unchecked, skin cancer can be fatal,” and urges them to “use sunscreen, cover up and watch for skin changes.”

The woman in the picture is a model, not a skin cancer victim. And the advertisement’s implicit message - that those who die of skin cancer have themselves to blame - has provoked a sharp response from some public-health doctors, who say the evidence simply does not support it.

As the advertisement says, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer. But most skin cancer is not life-threatening: it represents less than 2 percent of all cancer deaths, an estimated 10,850 people this year. Almost all of those deaths are from melanoma, which makes up only 6 percent of all skin-cancer cases.

And the link between melanoma and sun exposure is not straightforward. Dr. Marianne Berwick, an epidemiologist at the University of New Mexico who studies skin cancer, led a study published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2005 finding that people who had a lot of sun exposure up to the time they got a diagnosis of melanoma actually had better survival rates than those who had little sun exposure. The researchers are conducting a large’scale follow-up aimed at clarifying the relationship between sun exposure and melanoma.

Until that is made clear, many doctors say, it is premature to suggest that people are endangering their lives by failing to use sunscreen.

“It’s just not that simple,” said Dr. Barry Kramer, associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health.

“We do have some pretty good evidence that sunscreen will reduce your risk of the less lethal forms of skin cancer,” Dr. Kramer added. “There’s very little evidence that sunscreens protect you against melanoma, yet you often hear that as the dominant message.”

Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, acknowledges that the advertisement is aggressive. “We have taken some license in taking that message and using it the way we-ve used it,” he said, “because that’s the way to get the message to our target audience.”

Dr. Lichtenfeld said the advertisements were aimed at women ages 20 to 48 because sun exposure in childhood and young adulthood can influence skin cancer risk later in life, and it is mothers who largely control children’s time in the sun.

He added that the advertisement’s creators settled on the approach with the help of focus groups, who told them, “To get the message through to me, you have to shock me and get my attention.”

“Our focus groups showed us that these young women as a group were oblivious to the risk and felt that skin cancer isn-t a serious problem,” Dr. Lichtenfeld said, adding, “The issue isn-t A-How can you tell whether it was caused by sun exposure?- The issue is to try and prevent that sun exposure earlier in life so we reduce the risk for people later in life.”

In an effort to spread awareness about sun safety, the cancer society has joined with Neutrogena, a division of Johnson & Johnson whose sunscreens carry the society’s logo.

As part of the agreement, Neutrogena is paying for the public’service campaign, though its name is not mentioned in the advertisement.

Iris Grossman, director of communications for Johnson & Johnson, said the partnership benefited both parties. “We have the common goal of raising awareness of the importance of sun protection,” she said.

But this financial relationship raises red flags for some experts. “When people see an American Cancer Society public service announcement,” said Dr. Lisa Schwartz, co-director of the Outcomes Group at the Veterans Affairs hospital in White River Junction, Vt., “they expect it to reflect the best evidence. We don-t want people who have a financial interest to be telling you the benefit of doing something.” Dr. Lichtenfeld replied that Neutrogena did not influence the cancer society’s message on skin cancer.

The subject “has been important to our organization for some time,” he said, adding that the announcements “don-t promote something with a Neutrogena message on it - it’s our message.”

Howard L. Kaufman, co-director of the Melanoma Center at Columbia University and author of “The Melanoma Book” (Gotham, 2005), estimates that only 20 percent of melanomas are related to sun exposure, but says, “It’s the one risk factor that we can control.” While he calls the advertisements “a little bit alarmist” he says they are meant to raise awareness and they achieve that goal.

But Dr. Kramer, of the National Institutes of Health, disputes the advertisement’s assertion that skin cancer is “almost always curable if you catch it early.”

“There’s no high-quality evidence,” he said, “that shows that skin cancer screening prevents deaths.”

While the notion that detecting and treating early’stage cancers can prevent deaths might seem logical, the idea represents a gross oversimplification of how cancer works, Dr. Kramer said.

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from ABC NEWS
by Brian Ross, Richard Esposito & R. Schwartz

Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, have served as key advisors for the last five years to the pharmaceutical company that pled guilty today to charges it misled doctors and patients about the addiction risks of the powerful narcotic painkiller OxyContin.

Federal officials say the company, Purdue Frederick, helped to trigger a nationwide epidemic of addiction to the time-release painkiller by failing to give early warnings that it could be abused.

Prosecutors say “in the process scores died.”

Drug Enforcement Administration officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com Giuliani personally met with the head of the DEA when the DEA’s drug diversion office began a criminal investigation into the company.

According to the book “Painkiller,” by New York Times reporter Barry Meier, both Giuliani and his then-partner Bernard Kerik “were in direct contact with Asa Hutchinson, the administrator of DEA.”

Hutchinson told the Blotter on ABCNews.com today that Giuliani asked for a meeting, “and we gave him a meeting.” Hutchinson says he was aware the company was under investigation at the time, and “any time a company is under investigation I like to give them a chance to make their case.”

Kerik told New York Magazine at the time that Giuliani had raised $15,000 in donations for a “traveling museum operated by the DEA.”

Some officials told ABC News there were questions inside the agency of whether the donations were an attempt to influence the DEA.

Meier wrote that “with Giuliani now in the mix, the pace of DEA’s investigation into Purdue’s OxyContin plant in New Jersey slowed as Hutchinson repeatedly summoned division officials to his office to explain themselves and their reasons for continuing the inquiry.”

Giuliani publicly praised the company, Purdue Frederick, when it hired him in May 2002 for an undisclosed amount. “Purdue has demonstrated its commitment to fighting this problem,” he said, referring to the issue of drug addiction.

According to Giuliani Partners, Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under Giuliani, was in charge of helping Purdue improve security at the New Jersey plant.

Kerik left Giuliani Partners after disclosures he was under criminal investigation.

In hiring Giuliani, Purdue said, “Giuliani Partners is uniquely qualified” to address the issue of preventing drug abuse.

The Web site for Giuliani Partners lists Purdue Pharma as one of its current clients.

A spokeswoman for Giuliani Partners told ABC News today, “The proceeding speaks for itself, and beyond that we’re not going to comment.”

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Yet another story of doctors allowing “Big Pharma” to rule their profession when it comes to prescribing medications. Aside from fines, there should be jail terms for these evil drug companies.

ROANOKE, Va. - The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to misleading the public about the drug’s risk of addiction, a federal prosecutor and the company said.

Purdue Pharma L.P. and the executives will pay $634.5 million in fines, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said in the news release.

The plea comes two days after the Stamford, Conn.-based company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged physicians to overprescribe OxyContin.

“With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public,” Brownlee said. “For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice.”

read more about Oxycontin HERE and HERE

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Actually, quite sickening. If this is true that drug companies are paying doctors to “pill up” our children, it’s another sad story of corporate greed in America. Something that must stop…and stop now! - Jim

from The New York Times
By GARDINER HARRIS, BENEDICT CAREY and JANET ROBERTS

When Anya Bailey developed an eating disorder after her 12th birthday, her mother took her to a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called Risperdal.

Created for schizophrenia, Risperdal is not approved to treat eating disorders, but increased appetite is a common side effect and doctors may prescribe drugs as they see fit. Anya gained weight but within two years developed a crippling knot in her back. She now receives regular injections of Botox to unclench her back muscles. She often awakens crying in pain.

Isabella Bailey, Anya’s mother, said she had no idea that children might be especially susceptible to Risperdal’s side effects. Nor did she know that Risperdal and similar medicines were not approved at the time to treat children, or that medical trials often cited to justify the use of such drugs had as few as eight children taking the drug by the end.

Just as surprising, Ms. Bailey said, was learning that the university psychiatrist who supervised Anya’s care received more than $7,000 from 2003 to 2004 from Johnson & Johnson, Risperdal’s maker, in return for lectures about one of the company’s drugs.

Doctors, including Anya Bailey’s, maintain that payments from drug companies do not influence what they prescribe for patients.

But the intersection of money and medicine, and its effect on the well-being of patients, has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. Nowhere is that more true than in psychiatry, where increasing payments to doctors have coincided with the growing use in children of a relatively new class of drugs known as atypical antipsychotics.

read more at The New York Times

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