The Wall Street Journal - May 6, 2005 5:00 p.m. EDT

    http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111541308848327155,00.html

By JENNIFER CORBETT DOOREN, DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration said Friday a Pfizer Inc. advertisement for its antidepressant Zoloft omitted information about the risk of suicide.

"This ad is concerning from a public health perspective because it fails to include a serious risk associated with the drug," the FDA said in a letter to Pfizer. The letter was posted on the FDA's Web site.

by Don Weitz

Don Weitz is a psychiatric survivor, antipsychiatry and antipoverty activist in Toronto. He is co-founder of the former antipsychiatry magazine Phoenix Rising, former board member of Support Coalition International (a coalition of approximately 100 survivor and human rights advocacy organizations in 14 countries), and co-founder of the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA). He is also host-producer of "Antipsychiatry Radio" on CKLN (88.1FM) in Toronto. This unique program airs around 6:30pm on the last Friday every month.

"AIDS campaigners have welcomed a decision by Brazil to turn down US funds because of a clause in the agreement condemning prostitution."

Pasadena Star-News

By Gary Scott, Staff Writer; Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - PASADENA --

California now spends more than $4 billion a year on prescription drugs, and one Democratic law maker says it is time for the companies reaping the profits to make an accounting.

Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, has introduced a bill that would require pharmaceutical companies doing business with the state to reveal how much they spend on marketing each year relative to what they spend on research. Scott said the state has the right to know if sky rocketing drug prices are due to massive investments in research, as the pharmaceutical companies contend, or massive investments in television advertising to sell the popular medications.

Bitter Pills by E. Jane Garland,
Clinical Professor, Psychiatry, University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC

Medicines out of control - Anti-depressants and the Conspiracy of Goodwill,
Charles Medawar, Anita Hardon Amsterdam: Aksant; 2004 260 pp ISBN 90 5260 134 8

From its provocative title, this "narrative about a drug crisis still in the making" proceeds to an analysis of the history of various mood-soothing medicines (opium, cocaine, barbiturates, benzodiazepines and, most recently, SSRIs), whose unexpected adverse effects and potential to induce dependence were either ignored or denied. The content is both controversial and compelling.

DRUGGED INTO SUBMISSION [ DAY 2 OF 2 ]

Even babies getting treated as mentally ill
-- Prescriptions on the rise even though they haven't been tested on children - Monday, April 25, 2005 by Encarnacion Pyle; THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Doctors prescribed sedatives and powerful, mood-altering medications for nearly 700 Ohio babies and toddlers on Medicaid last summer, according to a Dispatch review of records.

(Excerpts from article follows...)

NIH = National Institutes of Health - the governmental body which sets National Health Policy for the U.S.

By Lisa Richwine

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Strict new ethics rules imposed on National Institutes of Health staff to prevent lucrative deals with drug companies may be loosened if warranted, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said on Tuesday.

The rules, which limit outside consulting work, were announced in February after reports of one NIH researcher who was paid $500,000 over five years by a private company and other similar cases.

From Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Ill-Health Canada

Putting Food and Drug Company Profits Ahead of Safety

February 25, 2005 | National Office | Topic(s): Corporations & corporate power, Health, health care system, pharmacare | Author(s): Michael McBane | Publication Type: Reports & Studies | ISBN: 0-88627-405-2 | Pages: 130

"Attempts to overhaul mental health law in England and Wales suffered a withering blow last month when a Joint Parliamentary Committee described the draft bill as 'fundamentally flawed' and sent it back to committee."

CMAJ April 26, 2005; 172 (9). doi:10.1503/cmaj.050333.

Drug Safety

Alicia Priest,
Victoria, BC

Citing the recent withdrawal of refecoxib (Vioxx), members of a new national consumer network say Health Canada and Canadian doctors are failing in their duty to protect the public from harmful drugs.

"SALIM al-Adra opens a plastic bag to display the green
pellets that Palestinian villagers in the West Bank village
of Tuwani say signify a dramatic and deadly escalation
of attacks by Israeli settlers. The pellets, according to
laboratory tests, are 2-fluoroacetamide, a rat poison
banned or severely restricted in many countries but
produced by two Israeli factories."

"In Canada, the information used to approve new drugs is deemed commercially sensitive and hence confidential under the Access to Information Act and the Therapeutic Products Directorate (TPD) will not release such information without the manufacturer's approval. As a consequence, safety and efficacy information contained in unpublished trials submitted to the TPD is generally unavailable to researchers, physicians and patients, a situation that can potentially lead to the inappropriate prescribing and use of medications."

Z Magazine, April 2005

Corporate Fraud - Behind the Paxil Scandals By Bruce Levine

In June 2004 New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer brought suit
against Glaxo, alleging that it had engaged in repeated and persistent
fraud with respect to Paxil (a $3.1 billion grossing drug in 2003). Spitzer had evidence that the giant pharmaceutical corporation Glaxo had suppressed the
results of studies on children and adolescents that showed Paxil to be ineffective and to increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior. When he first announced the suit, Spitzer stated, "By concealing critically important scientific studies on Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline impaired doctors' ability to make the appropriate prescribing decision for their patients and may have jeopardized their health and safety." Spitzer had an internal Glaxo memo from 1998 stating that the company intended to "manage the dissemination of the data in order to minimize any potential negative commercial impact."

"So much does General Motors love Canada's socialized, taxpayer-funded 'single-payer' health care system, that the company's top executives in Canada, along with the top execs of Ford, Chrysler and a host of other U.S.-owned subsidiaries in Canada, actually have been lobbying the provincial and federal government(s) to expand the system to include other services such as pharmacy and home health care-and to increase funding of what is known in Canada as 'Medicare.'"

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/index.htm

Sepp Hasslberger @ Health Supreme

Networking For A Better Future-News & perspectives you may not find in the media

April 23, 2005

A provision introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the Protecting America in the War on Terror Act, introduced in January this year as Senate Bill S-3, will effectively limit the liability of pharmaceutical manufacturers including Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Weyeth and Eli Lilly, for having caused widespread poisoning of children resulting in damage to normal brain development. As a matter of fact, an epidemic of autism is sweeping especially those countries that have made childhood vaccinations mandatory and have used mercury-laced vaccines for decades.