Avandia - the battle continues
Families face battle with GSK over dangerous diabetes drug
Thousands of families in the UK could be deprived of compensation for the death or harm of a relative caused by the diabetes drug Avandia, even though the British maker has agreed to pay billions of dollars to settle similar claims in the US.
The licence for Avandia was revoked in Europe, in September 2010, because of evidence that it could cause heart failure and heart attacks. The drug can still be prescribed in the US, but not to patients at risk of heart problems.
A scientist with the Food and Drug Administration estimated that Avandia could have been respon...
Source: PharmaGossip - January 29, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Physician Payment Sunshine Act: Many Letters to Encourage Completion of Regulations, Disclosures Use in Malpractice Cases
As we continue to wait for the final regulations to implement the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, more groups are writing to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) urging the Obama Administration to release the rule. Last week, AARP, AFL-CIO, and 17 other healthcare advocacy groups issued a letter urging the Obama administration to roll out those regulations ASAP. “After all, the legislation is aimed at holding the line on healthcare costs--by minimizing pharma influence on brand-name prescribing--and at protecting patients from unhealthy results of untoward financial relationships, the groups wrot...
Source: Policy and Medicine - January 22, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
The Tragic Case of Aaron Swartz: Unequal Justice for Web Activists vs Health Care Corporate Executives
The recent tragic case of the suicide of Aaron Swartz raises many issues, and has inspired an outpouring of news coverage and internet discussion. Yet one issue it should raise that has not received much notice so far is that of how individuals and top executives are treated differently before the law.Summary of the CaseAaron Swartz was a prodigy who developed helped develop the RSS system for disseminating updates on web-site contents, and who helped develop the Reddit web-site. He was an advocate for information freedom, and more broadly, according to Matt Stoller, "a political activist interested in he...
Source: Health Care Renewal - January 15, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: US Department of Justice impunity Forest Pharmaceuticals legal settlements St Jude Medical GlaxoSmithKline Source Type: blogs
Overmedicating Patients & Speaking For Drugmakers
A jury in upstate New York recently found that a doctor’s negligence caused a patient to commit suicide by overmedicating him with psychiatric drugs. As it turns out, the same doctor was also paid more than $200,000 by various drugmakers for more than a decade to promote some of the same psychiatric medicines to other doctors, The Syracuse Post-Standard reports.
There is more. William Beals, 61, a family medicine doctor in Liverpool, New York, was disciplined by the state early last year for prescribing drugs to patients for years without ever seeing them in his office, the paper writes. In September, he was censured...
Source: Pharmalot - January 2, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Ed Silverman Tags: Uncategorized Cymbalta Effexor Eli Lilly GlaxoSmithKline Paxil Pfizer Zyprexa Source Type: blogs
