Pharmaceutical companies make me sick

Let's face it, the pharmaceutical business is all about profits over the health of consumers. It's scary to think that some of the prescriptions you or your loved one take could be of no use or even harmful to you.

We are lucky to have someone like New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer looking out for everyday people and consumers.

Spitzer has filed a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline claiming that the company engaged in repeated and persistent fraud.

Spitzer claims GSK suppressed the results of at least four different studies that showed the antidepressant Paxil

-wasno more effective than a placebo
-doubled the incidence of suicidal tendencies among users in three of the trials

At the same time the company was said to be promoting the drug heavily to American doctors boasting of its efficacy and safety. An internal GSK document from 1998, cited in the lawsuit, said the company would have to "effectively manage the dissemination of these data in order to minimise any potential negative impact," according to The Guardian's article, "Glaxo faces drug fraud lawsuit."

GlaxoSmithKline's coverup adds irony to the pharmaceutical giant's mission statement: "Our global quest is to improve the quality of life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer."

That is if their dangerous medicine doesn't kill you or make you kill others.

Take Donald Schell. He killed his wife, daughter, granddaughter and then himself on February 13, 1998 after two days on the pharmaceutical giant's anti-anxiety/depression drug Paxil. The drug manufacturer settled out of court.

This isn't the first time Spitzer has gone up against a pharmaceutical manufacturer.

Just two weeks ago Spitzer's office announced Warner-Lambert, a subsidary of Pfizer, had entered a series of agreements worth $430 million to federal and state agencies to resolve allegations of illegal and deceptive promotions of one of its blockbuster drugs.

In conjunction with the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units, Spitzer's office uncovered the fact that Warner-Lambert engaged in numerous illegal and deceptive business practices to convince physicians to prescribe its blockbuster epilepsy drug, Neurontin, for other "off-label" indications for which the drug was not approved.

The investigation revealed that Warner-Lambert engaged in promotion of Neurontin for off-label indications for which there is little or no scientific evidence of efficacy to the tune of $2.7 billion in sales in 2003.

Among their many offenses, Warner-Lambert gave kickbacks and expensive perks to physicians who prescribed the medicine to patients for off-label uses.
Read the full press release, "PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT AGREES TO HISTORIC SETTLEMENT".