GSK whistleblowers handsomely rewarded for their evidence which helped in the US prosecution of Glaxo for drug mispromotion and fraud

The Telegraph reports that four former GlaxoSmithKline employees will share up to £159 million for their part in the successful prosecution of the drug company. Unfortunately Glaxo's crimes and misdemeanours are regarded with amazing leniency in Britain, as evidenced by the award of a knighthood earlier this year to Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline. Drug company profits trump patient safety and corporate ethics.

Conflicts of Interest on Stilts - or is it on Steroids?

Conflicts of Interest on Stilts - or is it Steroids? - Read George Monbiot's Guardian article. "Democracy itself is being undermined by publicly funded agencies crawling with conflicts of interest and devoid of scrutiny" I urge you to read the whole of this excellent article about how undue power is increasingly being accorded to Big Pharma and other industrial giants, while ordinary voters and other taxpayers go unrepresented on these quangos.

And here is some of what Dr Rath has to say about this: "At the time of writing, the Board of Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) contains retired senior executives from drug companies AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme. Similarly, its Executive Board contains a former employee of Glaxo, DuPont and DuPont Pharmaceuticals who is currently an employee of Bristol-Myers Squibb; a former employee of Glaxo Wellcome and GlaxoSmithKline; and a former employee of SmithKline Beecham. Continuing this pattern, the council members on the country’s Medical Research Council (MRC) include representatives of Sanofi Pasteur and Pfizer, whilst its Global Health Group and Translational Research Group both have members from GlaxoSmithKline."

Criticism mounts on GSK re Avandia, its diabetes drug widely regarded as unsafe

See the Telegraph article. Incredibly Glaxo's response has been, ""Since 2007 we have seen results from six controlled clinical trials looking at the cardiovascular safety of Avandia. Together they show that this medicine does not increase the overall risk of heart attack, stroke or death."" - And the band played believe it if you like...

Glaxo playing the wide-eyed innocent sits oddly with the ghastly history of the usage of this drug, and the tactics, including intimidation, GSK have employed to try to suppress the facts about its adverse effects. You can read some of that history here: http://wildeaboutobesity.blogspot.com/search/label/Avandia.

Warning about improper administration of antiviral drug, Relenza, following death of influenza patient

MarketWatch reports that Glaxo and the FDA have "warned doctors about the proper use of the antiviral drug Relenza after receiving a report of an influenza patient who died after receiving the drug through a mechanical ventilator."

You can boost your immune system by eating less salt and salty food, and by avoiding dieting. Good nutrition is the safest medicine.

Doubts are being raised about the safety of Glaxo's Avandia drug

See Wall Street Journal article with news about this diabetes drug.

There is a completely safe, effective, drug-free way to reduce diabetes problems. - If you avoid salt and salty food you will lose some excess weight and lower your high blood pressure. It is also good for your heart to eat less salt/sodium and it will lower your cholesterol level.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, angina, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See also FAT RETENTION

Glaxo Intimidated Another Avandia Critic

The following paragraph is copied and pasted from Dr Rath's newsletter.

A ruckus erupted last year when reports surfaced that Glaxo was accused of intimidating John Buse, a University of North Carolina researcher who, years earlier, questioned the safety of its Avandia diabetes pill, which was linked to heart problems (back story). However, he wasn’t the only one the drugmaker tried to stifle. A doctor from a small Maryland hospital linked Avandia to congestive heart failure in 2000, but Glaxo rejected her warning and tried stop her from talking about it with other docs and hospitals, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Public Citizen Petitions FDA To Ban Glaxo’s Avandia

The consumer group wants the agency to have the diabetes pill yanked over deaths from liver failures and other life-threatening risks. In a statement, Public Citizen calls Avandia, which is used to treat Type Diabetes 2, “unacceptably dangerous,” and cites new research to justify its petition. The move comes after the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes last week both advised against using Avandia (look here and here).
Read article at pharmalot.com

GlaxoSmithKline could pay Swiss company Actelion up to 3.3 billion Swiss francs (1.6 billion pounds) to develop an insomnia drug

GSK to pay Actelion up to 1.6 bln for drug rights
Article in International Herald Tribune

Extract:

"Glaxo, Europe's biggest drugmaker, beat many of the world's top pharmaceuticals companies to partner Actelion's sleeping pill almorexant and the deal sent the Swiss biotech's stock soaring nearly 10 percent on Monday."

If you suffer from insomnia you can improve your sleep without taking drugs. - Reducing salt/sodium intake improves sleep so just try to avoid salt and salty food.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls is at the centre of a controversy over the appointment of a top executive with the drugs company GSK to the board of Ofsted

The following paragraph is copied from http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/Newsletter/archive/newsletter_2008_07_jul_09.html

A scandal is mushrooming because the Schools Secretary has appointed a Glaxo exec to the board of the government's official education watchdog agency, known as Ofsted. And the move occurred less than a month before the government awarded a reported $200 million contract to Glaxo for its HPV vaccine for school-age girls 12 years and older, which some parents fear will give a green light to teenage sex, The Daily Mail reports. The appointment also comes at a time when a growing number of families are filing lawsuits against Glaxo over its Paxil antidepressent, claiming the drug caused suicide or attempted suicides.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Smells fishy to me...

Bayer & Glaxo Linked To Bribes In Italy

A drug licences-for-cash scandal has engulfed Italy's medicines regulatory agency with leading officials arrested along with people linked to major drugmakers, PharmaTimes writes. The most senior figure to have been held is Pasqualino Rossi, vp of Aifa, the Italian Agency for Pharmaceuticals, and one of Italy's most senior reps at the European Medicines Agency. Five lobbyists have also been arrested, and an eighth person is being sought. Arrest warrants were issued after an investigating judge saw a 400-word police report suggesting money had changed hands in return for falsifying clinical data required for drug licences, according to PharmaTimes.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Glaxo takes out newspaper ads to defend Avandia

Glaxo defends Avandia with newspaper ads

Extract:

"The ads, which appeared in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, take the form of a letter to Avandia patients signed by Ronald Krall, chief medical officer of the world's second-largest drugmaker.

The unusual step comes a day before a scheduled U.S. congressional hearing on the Food and Drug Administrations role in evaluating the safety of Avandia, and a day after the first solid data became available on the medicine's eroding prescription numbers.

Avandia, known chemically as rosiglitazone, came under fire last month after an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested the type 2 diabetes treatment might raise the risk of heart attack by 43 percent and of cardiac-related death by 64 percent. The analysis, by a top U.S. cardiologist, Steven Nissen, drew on pooled data from 42 trials involving nearly 28,000 patients.

Glaxo has been on the defensive ever since, putting out news releases criticizing the so-called meta-analysis and methods used in reaching its conclusions and defending the safety of the $3.2 billion (1.6 billion pound) a year product; trotting out executives to discuss Avandia safety with the media; and publishing a letter in the Lancet medical journal saying large studies showed Avandia's cardiovascular safety to be comparable to other widely used diabetes treatments."