Jeremy Laurance draws attention to vast scale of drug company criminality

Jeremy Laurance draws attention in his detailed article in the Independent to the vast scale of drug company criminality and the failure of multibillion-dollar fines to curb the criminality. What is necessary is for the criminal bosses of these companies to appear in court to be tried and sentenced as individuals. Prison sentences for the people who initiate and sanction the bribery, corruption, fraud, cover-ups, lies, etc that result in great and avoidable suffering and premature deaths for innocent victims would be more likely to curb the criminal behaviour than corporate fines.

Drugs companies exploit Indian 'guinea pigs'

Illiterate patients say they never agreed to take part in trials run by industry worth £189m
Western pharmaceutical companies have seized on India over the past five years as a testing ground for drugs – making the most of a huge population and loose regulations which help dramatically cut research costs for lucrative products to be sold in the West. The relationship is so exploitative that some believe it represents a new colonialism.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

Bribery of doctors and other NHS healthcare staff by pharmaceutical companies may be reduced by the Serious Fraud Office

An Independent on Sunday investigation has revealed that the bribery of doctors and other NHS healthcare staff with lavish hospitality and freebies by pharmaceutical companies may be reduced by the Serious Fraud Office.

"Big drug firms have spent millions of pounds on bankrolling events and trips for NHS staff, an Independent on Sunday investigation of trust records has revealed. The catalogue of freebies includes Pfizer providing hospitality to dozens of doctors attending a meeting at the five-star Gleneagles hotel resort in Scotland, and a dinner meeting between three Eli Lilly staff and two nurses at which 22 alcoholic drinks were consumed.

Healthcare staff, who influence how the £12bn annual NHS drugs budget is spent, insist they are not swayed by hospitality. However, it has emerged that big firms such as Sanofi-Aventis, Napp and Cephalon all feature in reports by the industry's watchdog, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), into alleged breaches in the rules on hospitality."

I recommend reading the whole of this damning report, including the Comments beneath the report.

ProPublica is investigating how drug company money reaches physicians

ProPublica is investigating how Pharmaceuticals Industry money reaches physicians, and the credentials and calibre of the physicians it uses. See this article.

Extract: "In 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Pennsylvania doctor James I. McMillen to stop “false or misleading” promotions of the painkiller Celebrex, saying he minimized risks and touted it for unapproved uses. Still, three other leading drug makers paid the rheumatologist $224,163 over 18 months to deliver talks to other physicians about their drugs."

There are many interesting Comments beneath the article.

Only a snowball's chance in Hell remains for civil cases against pharmaceutical companies in England and Wales to obtain legal aid from the government

Only a snowball's chance in Hell remains for litigants in civil cases against pharmaceutical companies in England and Wales to obtain legal aid from the government in order to pursue a case of clinical negligence or personal injury, as investigated by Radio 4's File on Four this evening.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to AVOID taking prescribed pharmaceutical drugs if you possibly can! The drug companies have long histories of criminal negligence, corruption and giving misleading information about their drug products. They have teams of highly-paid corporate lawyers well-versed in all the technical dodges to secure a favourable outcome for their shady clients.

The programme will be repeated on Sun 23 Jan 2011 at 17:00 on BBC Radio 4.

Pharmaceutical Industry's Criminal Fraud Settlements

Between 1991-2010, there were 165 criminal and/or civil settlements by major pharmaceutical companies comprising of $19.8 billion in penalties. Four of the world's largest drug companies--GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough--accounted for 53% ($10.5 billion) of penalties during these two decades.
Read article on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (USA)

CEOs should be prosecuted when pharmaceutical companies break the law

CEOs should be prosecuted when pharmaceutical companies break the law.

See this NewScientist article by Paul Thacker, an investigator at the Project On Government Oversight, a non-profit organisation exposing waste, fraud and abuse in federal government.

The Population Debate, radio discussion on the World Service's One Planet

I listened to this interesting programme early this morning. You can listen using iPlayer here.

"The number of people living on the planet is rising and we are approaching the seven billion inhabitants mark......

This week, the UN published its latest projections for the world's population, so One Planet's taken the opportunity to take another look at the topic of humanity's numbers.

Three guests from around the world join Mike to discuss the issue. In London we have John Guillebaud from the Optimum Population Trust; from New York Matthew Connelly, author of Fatal Misconception; and from Calcutta, the social demographer Alaka Basu. Plus we hear reports from Uganda - a country with one of the fastest birth rates in the world - and from Japan, a country that is suffering a decline in its population."

They consider whether family sizes should be deliberately limited and whether this should always be voluntary. (There is a view that it is the rich people who most need to limit family size because they are the people who are most profligate in their usage of the planet's resources.) They do not, of course, discuss intentionally reducing population size by famine, war and pestilence! - But here is a webpage arguing that the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel is already embarked on "chemical warfare" using toxic drugs. Before you dismiss this idea as fanciful, consider the terrible harm done by the majority of pharmaceutical drugs, the fraudulent claims made by the drugs companies, the times they have been sued for suppressing evidence of adverse effects from their products, their bribery and corruption of doctors, influential politicians and others, the drug trial scandals, etc.

US Department of Justice is probing corruption in the pharmaceutical industry

The US Department of Justice is scrutinising payments by leading pharmaceuticals companies for hospitality, consultants, licensing agreements and charitable donations in markets around the world as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe. GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly, among others, have disclosed being contacted by the DoJ and Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the investigation. Merck, the US drugs group, announced that it had also been contacted and was co-operating with investigators.
Read article at yahoo.com

An investigation is long overdue, surely?

European Medicines Agency working with patient groups bankrolled by drug industry

EU drugs agency working with patient groups bankrolled by Big Pharma
European patients' groups, set up to represent the interests of the subjects of medical procedures in their dealings with healthcare systems, insurance firms and drug companies are in many cases bankrolled by pharmaceutical firms, according to a report. Complicating the situation, many such groups are working with and on the board of the European Medicines Agency - the very EU agency charged with evaluation of medicines in the bloc. A fresh report from transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory accuses the EMA of mis-administrating conflict of interest guidelines allowing individuals and groups to say falsely that they are not sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry.
Read article at euobserver.com

Millions wasted by NHS on expensive, useless MS drugs

See report in the Telegraph, where you will read that experts "called for a Government-backed scheme to provide the drugs to be scrapped and called for a public inquiry. In total at least £250 million could have been saved if a review had been carried out on the “costly failure” after its first two years, they warn."And also "The four drugs involved Avonex, Betaferon, Copaxone and Rebif, cost around £8,000 per patient per year."

These expensive drugs have been provided on the NHS for six years now, during which time they have performed less well than a placebo. - Why then, has it taken till now for anyone to seek to do anything about this? MS sufferers have enough to contend with, without being given false hope and useless drugs. And why can't the many legal eagles on the State payroll devise watertight contracts to ensure that the drug companies do not screw the NHS for costly drugs that prove to be worthless.

It is time we had some people in Government and in the Dept of Health with enough sense to resist the blandishments and lies of the pharmaceutical companies, and enough courage and integrity to listen to the people who are ill, rather than to the drug company executives who cosy up to the people in power, seeking to make money out of their expensive products, regardless of how useless or harmful those products are. During those six years of uselessness, why was no-one taking heed of their uselessness to patients? - No-one listening to the patients?

Investigation finds WHO swine flu experts WERE financially 'linked' with drug companies

Read BBC News report here. "A spokesman for WHO said the drug industry did not influence its decisions on swine flu." - Anyone believe that? - Anyone at all? - I certainly don't. - I suppose most people realise by now that the World Health Organisation is corrupted by the fact that some of its advisers are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. We therefore cannot trust what WHO tells us. What a terrible waste...

eu seems a misnomer to me.

eu- (Greek: good, well, normal; happy, pleasing; used as a prefix)

I loathe and despise just about everything that emanates from the EU, starting with the fact that it is a kleptocracy, rather than merely a bureaucracy. Continuing with the fact that its rules/laws are made to benefit nefarious multinationals (including the pharmaceutical industry, the processed food industry, the healthcare industry, the arms trade, the petrochemicals industry) rather than the EU taxpayers, whom the EU ostensibly serves. And among many other huge flaws, the EU is a non-elected, self-perpetuating, parasitical, unaccountable, corrupt, amoral monster. - IMHO/DYOR, of course.

Nearly 2,000 doctors named for taking pharmaceutical companies' gifts

NEW DELHI: Nearly 2,000 doctors have violated professional ethics by receiving gifts, hospitality, or monetary grants from pharmaceutical companies in the last three years, according to the Medical Council of India (MCI).
Read article in The Economic Times (India)

EU proposals would expose citizens to “intensive promotion” of new drugs

New attack on EU plans for patient drug information

The European Commission has been told that the “only rationale” for its current plans to ease certain controls on the provision of prescription drug information to the public “seems to be to benefit the commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies by expanding their markets and helping them to build brand loyalty.”
Read article at pharmatimes.com (UK)

Drug company grants to consumer health groups in Australia raise concerns about their independence

Read article on the AdelaideNow website (Australia)

PACE to hold hearings on 'falsified' swine flu pandemic

PACE is to hold hearings on pharmaceutical companies' possible influence on the global swine flu campaign and on the World Health Organization, a Russian daily reported. "The 47-nation Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is conducting an inquiry into an alleged conspiracy between the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry and scientists which could "expose millions of healthy people to the risk of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines," caused damage to public budgets and to health agencies' credibility, according to a PACE resolution. The motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of the health committee, former German lawmaker and a specialist in lung disease, who called the current pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century." WHO declared the pandemic in June 2009 on the advice of a group of experts many of whom are believed to have financial ties with pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, and benefited from the production of drugs and H1N1 vaccines."
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
Comment: Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has apparently said that Russia should withdraw from the WHO if the corruption suspicions are proven.

Swine Flu Conspiracy? There are close links between World Health Organization officials and drug companies over swine flu...

A British epidemiologist has said he is worried by close links between World Health Organization (WHO) officials and pharmaceutical companies over swine flu. Recent Danish media reports alleged that the WHO, which on June 11 declared swine flu a pandemic, has teamed up with pharmaceutical companies to create a scare and cash in on selling a remedy. In an interview with Russia's BFM.ru, Tom Jefferson, a scientist currently based in Rome, said that although he personally did not believe in plots, "I am a bit worried about what I have observed." He said WHO expert committees have "people with extensive ties to the industry or decision-makers who have explicitly kept on producing apocalyptic forecasts year in, year out."
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)

I share this scientist's concerns about the World Health Organisation.

Struck off paediatrician Professor David Southall, UNICEF and possible harm done by vaccines

Thought-provoking article by Christina England in the American Chronicle about the struck off paediatrician Professor David Southall, UNICEF and possible harm done by vaccines.

I've written about this guy before...)o:

Sponsorship by Drug Firms is Criticised

Pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring patients' associations - and some say this is part of their strategy to get doctors to buy their drugs.
Read article on the SR International - Radio Sweden website (Sweden)