Many informed observers see the pharmaceutical industry as the natural successor to the tobacco industry: enormously wealthy and politically connected, ruthless, and much more concerned about profit than about the health of its customers.
Here are seven books describing the questionable practices that are an integral part of these powerful corporations' business model.
Canadian generic drug maker Apotex Inc.'s exports to the United States could be blocked if the company doesn't correct quality control problems, according to a warning letter from a U.S. regulator.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's website includes a warning letter sent to Apotex describing "repeated deficiencies" in quality control, such as ensuring drug products at one of its Toronto-area plant were free of bacterial or fungal contamination.
The United States uses nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics annually in food production. Livestock antibiotic use accounts for 80 percent of the total antibiotics sold in the US, and unnecessary use of antibiotics in food animals (cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys) is a major driving force behind the rampant development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Compare this to the 6 million pounds of antibiotics that are used for every man woman and child in the US combined. But unlike human use, in which antibiotics are prescribed to treat serious infection, in animals, drugs such as penicillins and tetracyclines are routinely added to animal feed as a cheap way to make the animals grow faster.
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If you had the opportunity to save “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions” of AIDS sufferers in Africa and other poor countries, what would you do? A complete no-brainer, right? Why in the world is it even a question?
The sad answer is that our federal government has this exact opportunity next week, when private member’s bill C-398 to enable this very outcome is voted on in the House. But the government has rejected such a bill before and intends to reject it again. Don’t ask me why. There’s no rational explanation, either of politics or public policy.
Since the death of his daughter as a result of taking a prescription drug, Conservative MP Terence Young has been campaigning for better regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.
Young testified on October 17 to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology as an expert witness regarding post-approval drug monitoring and the corrupt practices of pharmaceutical companies.
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On Oct. 17, 2012, Terence Young’s tireless 12-year crusade took him before a Senate committee looking into the safety and regulation of prescription drugs in Canada. The Conservative MP for Oakville, Ont., gave the panel an earful.
“Doctors and patients have no way to know when a drug is safe and when it is not,” he argued, noting that his own government’s drug monitoring system is “primarily in the hands of the big pharma companies themselves, even as a growing number of injuries and deaths are reported related to their use.”
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. will pay $95 million to settle allegations that the company promoted three drugs for uses that were not medically accepted, the government announced Thursday.
The Justice Department said the three are the stroke-prevention drug Aggrenox, the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease drug Combivent and the high-blood-pressure drug Micardis.
Avinash Kar – August 8, 2012
In a decision earlier today, a federal court in New York ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot delay regulatory proceedings for penicillin and tetracyclines use in livestock – two kinds of antibiotics whose overuse in animals is reducing their effectiveness in treating sick people.
The court action 1) ensures that action is not delayed further until after the resolution of an appeal by FDA of the court’s original decision to mandate these proceedings and 2) imposes a deadline for the completion of the proceedings (thereby rejecting FDA’s arguments that a schedule was not needed). FDA will have approximately five years to complete proceedings.
Two years ago, Hryhoriy, a retired police officer from a provincial Ukrainian town, nearly died of AIDS. Yet the ghostly, emaciated father of two considers himself lucky because he eventually got treated at a Kyiv clinic and is now slowly recovering.
Unlike the 53-year-old Hryhoriy, tens of thousands of fellow Ukrainians infected with HIV are not getting any treatment at all because the state says it doesn’t have enough money.
Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay as much as $2.2 billion to settle U.S. probes of the marketing of its Risperdal antipsychotic drug and other medications, two people familiar with the negotiations said.
The settlement, which might be announced this week, will include a misdemeanor plea and criminal penalty of as much as $600 million, said the people, who didn’t want to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the agreement. The accord also would resolve civil claims that J&J paid kickbacks to Omnicare Inc., a company that dispenses drugs at nursing homes, the people said.
