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Thursday, July 08, 2004
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British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) faces serious charges in Italy
Italian authorities are pressing on with their allegations that place British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in the middle of a bribery ring involving nearly 5000 doctors and employees in Italy.
Police are preparing charges following a two-year investigation in Verona. Charges will range from giving and receiving illicit compensation for prescribing or recommending a specific drug through to corruption and criminal association.
Although investigations started in Verona, they eventually spread to all 94 provinces of Italy, and involved the careful monitoring of doctors throughout the country.
According to the allegations, doctors were being bribed to prescribe expensive drugs to patients when they were not always the best treatment.
Investigations have now turned to other drug companies including Pfizer, Sanofi and Sigma Tau.
Regarding a similar investigation in Germany: German officials are not pressing charges against GSK concerning bribes to hospital doctors. GSK was among nine pharmaceutical companies being investigated. It was have confirmed that no charges will be made against GSK.
(Source: British Medical Journal, 2004; 328: 1333).
7:58:47 PM 
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As promised:
The Truth About the Drug Companies
Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular drug—usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the great outdoors—is a more general message. Boiled down to its essentials, it is this: "Yes, prescription drugs are expensive, but that shows how valuable they are. Besides, our research and development costs are enormous, and we need to cover them somehow. As 'research-based' companies, we turn out a steady stream of innovative medicines that lengthen life, enhance its quality, and avert more expensive medical care. You are the beneficiaries of this ongoing achievement of the American free enterprise system, so be grateful, quit whining, and pay up." More prosaically, what the industry is saying is that you get what you pay for.
Is any of this true? Well, the first part certainly is. Prescription drug costs are indeed high—and rising fast. Americans now spend a staggering $200 billion a year on prescription drugs, and that figure is growing at a rate of about 12 percent a year (down from a high of 18 percent in 1999).[1] Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year.
Before its patent ran out, for example, the price of Schering-Plough's top-selling allergy pill, Claritin, was raised thirteen times over five years, for a cumulative increase of more than 50 percent—over four times the rate of general inflation.[2] As a spokeswoman for one company explained, "Price increases are not uncommon in the industry and this allows us to be able to invest in R&D."[3] In 2002, the average price of the fifty drugs most used by senior citizens was nearly $1,500 for a year's supply. (Pricing varies greatly, but this refers to what the companies call the average wholesale price, which is usually pretty close to what an individual without insurance pays at the pharmacy.)
The New York Review of Books will be August 12, 2004.
5:28:32 PM
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Drug Companies Seek to Mend Their Image
 ith drug prices skyrocketing, the pharmaceutical industry has long had plenty of critics. And in a measure of just how badly
tarnished the industry's image has become, even some of its most prominent defenders are turning against it.
That could spell trouble, which is why the drug industry is about to begin a charm offensive to try to win back the nation's affection.
Roy Vagelos, the well-known former chairman of Merck & Company and one of the industry's most prominent boosters, now condemns drug makers for the "exorbitant" prices of new medicines and "galloping" annual increases of old ones. Government price controls, he predicts, are almost inevitable.
Editor's Comment: Before you read the rest of this article, please keep in mind that FDA-approved prescrikption drugs are more
often deadly than life-saving. Our issue with this industry is NOT just outrageous prices and profits - more to the point is theiir
total disdain for honesty and ethics - more on this in a future posting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/business/08drug.html?ex=1246939200&;en=e5e7672e967d7993&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
4:40:01 PM
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THE TRUTH ABOUT CRESTOR: IS CRESTOR DANGEROUS AND IF SO WHY?
The intensive marketing of this new, super-strong cholesterol-lowering statin drug raises questions and concerns.
Are Crestor users in jeopardy? Is Crestor especially dangerous for Asians? Who should take Crestor and when?
A lower, safer approach that most doctors and patients don't know about.
Jay S. Cohen, M.D., is a nationally recognized expert on medication side effects. An associate professor of preventive
medicine, Dr. Cohen's book, Over Dose(Tarcher/Putnam 2001), is highly recommended by all major reviewers
including the Journal of the American Medical Association. In September 2004, his new book,What You Need
To Know About Statin Drugs And Their Natural Alternatives (Square One Publishers) will be released.
Dr. Cohen has been a keynote speaker at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology, and at many other meetings of doctors, patients, and drug company executives. Dr. Cohen has
written articles for Newsweek, Bottom Line Health, Life Extension Foundation Magazine, and his work has
been featured in virtually every major magazine and newspaper in America. Dr. Cohen has appeared on National
Public Radio, the People's Pharmacy, and other radio and TV programs..
For more information visit: www.medicationsense.com
4:35:00 PM
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© Copyright
2004
Arline Brecher.
Last update:
8/1/2004; 8:59:47 AM.
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