Glaxo, An Angry Blogger And Free Speech
251 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // April 3rd, 2008 // 3:28 pm
Back in February, a UK resident named Bob Fiddaman posted a video on his site, which is known as Seroxat Sufferers. For those unaware, Seroxat is the trade name in the UK for the Paxil antidepressant and Fiddaman has regularly railed against the drugmaker over the pill and its various side effects, such as links to suicide and difficult withdrawal symptoms.
The four-minute video posted was, essentially, a pastiche that intersperses a photo of Alistair Benbow, Glaxo’s European head of psychiatry, with various written statements. Fiddaman juxtaposed statements from Glaxo and Benbow with conflicting statements from various documents to create a contrast that underscored charges that the drugmaker hid evidence from regulators, doctors and the public. Later, on his own site, Fiddaman also posted a remark that compared Benbow to a notorious dictator.
At that point, Glaxo’s attorneys wrote a letter demanding he remove the remark and the video because these implied Benbow had lied or was guilty of a cover-up and that it was all defamatory. Fiddaman apologized, removed the video and then posted the letter, but it continues to circulate. And a growing number of bloggers accuse Glaxo of stifling debate about a controversial drug that remains the subject of litigation.
“One is left wondering who has caused the greater offence, who owes the apology, and to whom that apology is owed,” wrote Aubrey Blumsohn on his Scientific Misconduct blog. “The scientific questions are overwhelming, and the intimidation of a questioning patient cannot be allowed to divert attention from the lack of any real answering.”
We contacted Glaxo and a spokeswoman wrote the drugmaker “accepts that the company and its products are subject to public debate. However, we cannot accept personal and baseless attacks on our employees.” In a conversation, she adds “the issue was the specific offensive reference to one Glaxo employee.” So is there a concerted effort to stifle blogs and the video? No, she says. Will Glaxo approach other sites to remove the video should it be posted. To her knowledge, she says, no such decision has been made.
Nathan
I wonder if Bob Fiddaman’s screen alias is “pg” or “Truthman”… Now the pieces are fitting together…
truthman30
No Nathan, I am not Bob Fiddaman and to the best of my knowledge neither is pg….
Matthew Holford
It’s an intriguing tale. It seems that GSK notices what patients are saying, all right. But it only responds when it believes (wrongly, I think, in this case, aside from the issue of copyright of images), that it is able to demonstrate that somebody has crossed the civil or criminal line.
I asked its lawyers if it was planning to agree to the release of the documents that the MHRA reviewed during its recently concluded investigation (the ones that caused the MHRA to decide that GSK had withheld SAE data, and caused it to question the Company’s morality publicly). I expect to be ignored. Unless, of course, my emotions get the better of me, and I make some kind of remark to the effect that Alistair Benbow is either corrupt or incompetent, at which point I’m confident that I will receive correspondence from the Bedford Massive’s lawyers.
Anyway, there is no foundation to A&G’s allegations, other than in the somewhat warped reality of Ali B, that is, and I regret to say the Law hasn’t been transgressed, just because a lawyer on a retainer says so (apart from anything else, it is not defamatory to name call - as such, I think Benbow is a fucking cunt). Although, I thought it was really sweet of GSK to stick up for Ali B, in the completely disinterested way that it did.
Matt
BOB FIDDAMAN
Thanks for this post.
It amazes me how firstly Alldeshaw & Goddard, GSK’s lawyers, contact a third party to ‘warn me’ that what I was doing was (in their eyes) wrong.
Then the author of this web page goes into conversation with a spokesperson from GSK.
I too have mailed Alldeshaw & Goddard, alas I have received no reply.
The apology was made to Benbow for likening him to Hitler. To date I do not know whether or not he has accepted my apology… and so it continues.
The video was taken down because it seems I infringed the copyright law or is it trademark?
The actual content of the video was, in essence, a debate. The defence being Alistair Benbow.
Benbow has been the mouthpiece for GSK regarding Seroxat so I had to use him as the subject. He is vocal so why not I?
The video has now been uploaded by various bloggers so Addleshaw & Goddards scheme to gag me has kind of backfired.
It will be interesting to see if GSK ask (warn) other bloggers to remove the video. I suspect they won’t which gives me the feeling of being victimised and singled out.
Fid
GSK Lawyers target Seroxat campaigner Bob Fiddaman - what next? « seroxat secrets…
[...] An Angry Blogger And Free Speech (Ed Silverman of Pharmalot and the Star-Ledger of New Jersey) [...]
www.worldpharmanews.net
Pharmalot » Glaxo, An Angry Blogger And Free Speech…
Back in February, a UK resident named Bob Fiddaman posted a video on his site, which is known as Seroxat Sufferers. For those unaware, Seroxat is the trade name in the UK for the Paxil antidepressant and Fiddaman has regularly railed against the drugma…
pg
Nathan said: “I wonder if Bob Fiddaman’s screen alias is “pg” or “Truthman”… Now the pieces are fitting together”
I’m not Fiddaman or Truthman and to the best of my knowledge they’re also two seperate individuals.
Using wild and inaccurate guesswork to purport that…”the pieces are fitting together” sounds ever so much like current pharma science though. :-|
pg
Rather like this paxil site actually:
http://www.paxilcr.com/how_paxilcr_works/how_paxilcr_works.html
“Scientific evidence SUGGESTS that depression and certain anxiety disorders <MAYy be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Paxil CR helps balance your brain’s chemistry. (See Important Safety Information about Paxil CR.)”
So Paxil CR helps balance what MIGHT be caused by a chemical imbalance, but they have no idea because its only a SUGGESTION. so not exactly EVIDENCE really, not to anyone thinking scientifically at least.
Basically, as thats their ’science’ given away in the first paragraph, then you know the rest of it is a bit like the statement:
“I wonder if Bob Fiddaman’s screen alias is “pg” or “Truthman”… Now the pieces are fitting together”
ie, unbelievable unscientific garbage.
“
Laurie
Until someone goes through, or watches someone go through withdrawal, you just don’t realize the devastation it can cause. Anger..yup, people are VERY angry about not being informed. GSK is just going to have to deal with their lack of complete disclosure on Paxil’s effects. With thousands of reports of horrendous withdrawal, GSK continues to deny the problem even today.
I don’t have alot of sympathy for Benbow having his feelings hurt.
pg
Messed up the html here, sorry:
“Scientific evidence SUGGESTS that depression and certain anxiety disorders MAY be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Paxil CR helps balance your brain’s chemistry. (See Important Safety Information about Paxil CR.)…”
Scientific “EVIDENCE” only “SUGGESTS” a cause?
After all those years of research? AND despite that research failing to prove anything of the sort, they make $$$ millions by saying that they have a drug that puts right the “SUGGESTED” possible cause?
Unbelievable how they’ve managed to get away with such a $$$Billions-making scam so successfully.
pg
Hi Laurie, the horrific thing about it all is that its not just ONE drug - its so many of them. SSRIs, SNRIs, (atypical antidepressants - the SSRI/SNIR terminology is just a PR tactic to make them sound ‘interestingly different’) antipsychotics and the rest.
Its unbelievable what they have gotten away with in the last couple of decades. Just awful.
Stephany
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2008/04/this-usa-blog-supports-bob-fiddaman-gsk.html
Nathan
I’ll be at a medicinial chemistry meeting next week. There is a 4 hour session devoted to “Depression - Beyond SSRIs”. It will be interesting to see what the next generation of antidepressants will bring. There’s a lot of stuff coming through the pipeline. I hope you won’t discount the potential of future drugs just because the existing drugs are so bad. We aren’t sitting on our butts watching the money roll in — we’re working hard on the next generation of antidepressants.
(I say “we” very loosely — I actually work on an inflammation department. But I enjoy following CNS drugs quite a bit — they are incredibly challenging due to the fact that meaningful animal models are almost nonexistant.)
pg
Did Benbow know what he was promoting? Do the other Key Opinion Leaders re other drugs know what they are promoting?
I would say yes. Thats why KOL’s are so well paid. Paid well to lie. Lies in the media, lies up against opposition. Lies when presented with the realities. If they don’t know then when faced with facts from the opposition, they have no right to be considered ‘experts’ and if they DO know, they’re hired as experts, then they’re GUILTY of gross misconduct, guilty of the deaths their lies have caused.
pg
Nathan: ” hope you won’t discount the potential of future drugs just because the existing drugs are so bad.”
Thats different (from what I’ve seen from you, Nathan) and I see you can see the existing drugs are bad. But they’re not going to get any better while they still trying to prove a “suggestion” that depression “may” be due to a chemical imbalance.
Its crap science, and the KOLs know it - but they also know it brings in the $$$s.
WHEN they start discovering their lost ethics, if they ever do, that is when they’ll start using SCIENCE. So far they haven’t shown any sign of doing so, and while the $ is the objective they won’t.
Pharma should make money IF AND WHEN they use it well. But so far they’re using it to make money at the expense of life. When they stop the fraud people like me will defend them. WHEN they stop the fraud. They haven’t even started to do so yet.
Former pharma Marketing Exec
This certainly is an interesting twist on having one’s voice heard!
The power of the internet, brings the power to the people.
We’ve had this discussion quite a bit here, but we have to ask again, what makes people think that the things they say publicly wont come back to haunt them?
You have to wonder if at some point someone thought the suicides could be hidden in the fact that the patients were depressed anyway? I mean, why hide it?
The right approach for anti depressants is to accept the reality that they do very little good in cases of mild depression. In cases of severe depression the risks might, might, be worth the potential side effects. But then again cases of severe depression are usually better managed and hopefully suicidal ideation would be picked up on in time to “rescue” the patient.
This would have been the right approach, but of course the sales would not have been very high. Additionally there is probably some underlying pharmacoeconomic model somewhere that shows how these patients can be treated with minimal medical intervention and care, thereby reducing the costs to the system. In the end, when you connect all the dots - and the dots always get connected - you can actually see the extent the management went to in order to cover up and deceive the very market they serve. The patients, their own scientific advisory board, their KOL’s. A complete show of disrespect for this important disease category.
Doesn’t it sound like I have just described the behavior of a psychopath? Who else would blatantly say they are putting the patient first, when in fact their actions have caused such harm.
I am grateful that I have always been able to work in a very ethical environment.
TRANSPARENCY!!!
Nathan
pg says:
“Thats different …and I see you can see the existing drugs are bad. But they’re not going to get any better while they still trying to prove a “suggestion” that depression “may” be due to a chemical imbalance.”
Here’s what I’m saying (and I’ve said before):
1) Existing drugs are insufficient. They aren’t part of some vast evil conspiracy.
2) I’ve been able to find no evidence that SSRIs lower suicide rates. Conversely, I’ve also been unable to find any credible evidence that they RAISE suicide rates.
3) The drugs clearly work in some patients — but they also cause severe side effects in others.
4) No matter how you want to say it, depression IS caused by some sort of chemical imbalance. Your brain is a mass of neurons that are constantly sending chemical messages back and forth with one another. When something goes wrong up there, it is due to some sort of a chemical signaling pathway gone awry. You’ve said again and again that this isn’t true, that depression is caused by combinations of experience. You are absolutely right — those EXPERIENCES are translated into chemical signals in your brain. What do you think your brain is? Is it some spiritual energy center? No! It’s a mass of neurons and neurotransmitters interspersed with blood vessels floating in cerebrospinal fluid. You can treat your brain with drug just like you can treat your liver with drugs — the only difference is that we don’t know as much about the brain.
Nathan
FPME says:
“I am grateful that I have always been able to work in a very ethical environment.”
I am also grateful that I have always been able to work in a very ethical environment in my 7 years in the pharmaceutical industry. I work for an industry that has saved millions and millions of lives. We have kept babies from getting sick, delayed the onset of dementia in the elderly, and given cancer patients precious extra months with their family. We do this through the use of honest and transparent science. Not everyone agrees with the science done — even as scientists we disagree with one another. That doesn’t make us unethical. Marketing people (like you supposedly used to be) do occasionally oversell our products. But remember — a pharmaceutical company is unable to prescribe a drug to anyone. Only a treating physician can do that. I hope that the “righteous anger” that you portray also extends to them.
Matthew Holford
Former pharma Marketing Exec wrote:
“…In the end, when you connect all the dots - and the dots always get connected - you can actually see the extent the management went to in order to cover up and deceive the very market they serve. The patients, their own scientific advisory board, their KOL’s…”
Yes, and yet, despite this evident and flagrant abuse of trust, it seems that no significant effort is being made to remedy the deficiencies of the system that permitted it to happen, in the first place. There will be a bit of superficial tweaking, obviously, but there will be no attempt to change the culture of secrecy and blind eye.
There is no argument, here: the drug doesn’t work in any but the tiniest proportion of depressed people. And it’s dangerous. The Company knew both these things, but continued to press the drug on an unwitting public. The only thing that saves GSK from a very public humiliation in the criminal courts, is, I suspect “the public interest,” as perceived.
That is, I imagine, the damage to the UK economy (loss of jobs - and people are already being laid off in Eire, where the drug is manufactured), and, more pointedly, loss of public confidence in a lie that should never have been peddled, when there is no alternative treatment that people are willing to consider, are the things that will be used as justification for doing nothing meaningful, at all. Meanwhile, people such as Bob Fiddaman will continue to receive shitty letters from halfwit lawyers on behalf of mealy-mouthed jobsworths.
Shit sticks. The things that GSK (and its regulators), would have to do in order to restore public trust are unconscionable for people with the mindset that these people have. It would mean that they have to admit that they were wrong - and they’ve positioned themselves such that that is not a possibility.
Matt
Aubrey Blumsohn
Nathan
I wonder whether there is a language problem around the meaning of the words “honest and transparent science” you have used. Perhaps you would be so kind as to make brief comment on the following two examples which I have chosen so that we can better understand the sense in which you use those words. It may be for example that you use the word transparency in a quite different sense to that in which others receive the word. Such linguistic problems are common in debates of this sort.
a href=”http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/2007/10/memory-hole-21-october-vioxx-and.html” target=”_blank”>Example 1
This is an inflammation example for you since you say that is your forte
http://scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com/2007/10/memory-hole-21-october-vioxx-and.html
Example 2:
When you are done with that, please take a look at the Glenmullan report, and let me know whether you regard the a) recoding and miscoding of data in trials, and b) the selective mis-publication of trials (such that prescribers cannot know what they are prescribing) as being part of the legitimate scientific method. It may be a view that such actions are appropriate.
I suppose that will help to understand whether this is a problem of
a) linguistics,
b) a simple difference between the level at which the bar of honesty or transparency is set
c) something else
The first rule of serious intellectual discourse is that you must actually read what you criticise or support.
I am sure that following your responses the discussion will continue with greater insight.
Best wishes
Aubrey
HorusCat
Nathan,
Hey buddy! I’m not getting in the middle of this one. Been there, done that. Can you figure out a way to contact me privately?
HC
HorusCat
Nathan is an example of the kind of people who work in pharma. He is not evil and calculating. He is honest and well-intentioned, and he is doing important work. Pharma has, does and will continue to extend life, save lives and make the quality of life better for millions of people.
Enjoy your meeting, Nathan. I hope it is somewhere warm and that the food is good. Convention food usually bites.
Nathan
Aubry,
I’m not going to argue the minutia of individual cases of scientific fraud and misconduct. The cases you sited may well be perfectly true. Those cases do happen from time to time, and will continue to happen on occasion — no matter what reforms and control measures are implemented. There are dishonest people in every occupation — including science and medicine. However, the process of the science is conducted in the open. The in-vitro studies, in-vivo studies, validation studies, selectivity studies, and clinical trial data are all published in peer-reviewed journals for the vast majority of medications. That is what I mean by “honest and transparent”.
Here’s a few points:
1) Cases of misconduct and fraud are isolated and rare. They gain such publicity due to the fact that they happen so rarely.
2) People make mistakes. Companies make mistakes. Our legal system largely prevents us from admitting those mistakes and offering true apologies. That is true in every industry, not just pharmaceuticals.
3) Some of those mistakes are due to greed. However, from my reading, most of those mistakes are due to simple misjudgment of the facts at hand. Science isn’t static — our opinions and judgments change as the facts change.
4) There is no large scale fraud, cover-up, or conspiracy within the pharmaceutical industry.
Nancy
Yeah right Nathan.
The minutae don’t matter only the broad assertions of “no problem - no large scale fraud”.
How many hundreds of minutae do you need (in the GSK SSRI trials alone)
Have you read the Glenmullen report? That is obvious evidence of large scale fraud, but you don’t classify it as such in your science.
Answer the question!
Matthew Holford
Nathan wrote:
“…Those cases do happen from time to time, and will continue to happen on occasion — no matter what reforms and control measures are implemented. There are dishonest people in every occupation — including science and medicine. However, the process of the science is conducted in the open…”
I oughtn’t really to butt in on a discussion, but really Nathan, that is arrant nonsense! The cloak of secrecy that has been drawn across the industry is a thing to behold. Try to penetrate that protective covering, and one soon discovers what the industry is about. Good Lord - the MHRA won’t even explain in generic terms how it assesses drugs! How, then, is one supposed to understand how it is that Benbow can make the public statements that he has, given the documentary evidence that exists that indicates that his employer has known for many, many years that what he was saying was not borne out by its own trials results? If you can indicate to me how it is that I may ask these questions of Benbow and his employers, then I will grant you that science is being conducted in the open. Otherwise, please don’t insult my intelligence.
As for this being and isolated example, in common with the ones that Aubrey put forward… Again, I have to contradict you. The Worshipful Company’s very business plan ensures that this is not true: there are too many examples of this sort of thing for it to be anything other than common practice. Vioxx, Avandia, the SSRIs, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, and so on, ad nauseum. And as long as regulators rubber stamp manufacturers’ opinions of their own drugs, this sort of thing will continue to happen, because there isn’t enough science happening to ensure that it doesn’t.
Matt
BOB FIDDAMAN
Nathan,
Do yourself a favour and read the two links Aubrey showed you.
“Cases of misconduct and fraud are isolated and rare”
Maybe so but misconduct and fraud for this particular industry (Pharma) comes at a cost of human life. It should not be glossed over.
“People make mistakes. Companies make mistakes. Our legal system largely prevents us from admitting those mistakes and offering true apologies. That is true in every industry, not just pharmaceuticals.”
Mistakes are fine. Lies and cover-up are not.
“Some of those mistakes are due to greed. However, from my reading, most of those mistakes are due to simple misjudgment of the facts at hand. Science isn’t static — our opinions and judgments change as the facts change.”
Misjudgment? I disagree Nathan. This isn’t about misjudgment more about misguidance. Pharma give the peer reviewers the positive results. This is NOT a misjudgment.
“There is no large scale fraud, cover-up, or conspiracy within the pharmaceutical industry.”
Pigs can’t fly but one just flew past my window.
I don’t mean to sound flippant Nathan but can you convince me that Pharma have nothing to hide?
With respect
Bob Fiddaman
Lisa Van S
Nathan,
“Depression is caused by some sort of chemical imbalance”,…Please provide me with the science to back up that claim.
Nathan
Matthew says: “And as long as regulators rubber stamp manufacturers’ opinions of their own drugs, this sort of thing will continue to happen, because there isn’t enough science happening to ensure that it doesn’t”
Rubber stamping? Is that was you call the FDA’s continual rejection and “approvable” letters that delay and deny approval of our drugs??? There is no government agency the rubber stamps our products — we are scrutinized and critisized more than any other industry out there. I find it amazing sometimes that we get any drugs approved at all!!
Nancy
I don’t usually like ad-hominem attacks.
But shame on you Nathan.
A little logic and attention to the actual facts would be a good idea. Answer the actual questions or shut up.
Nathan
Lisa,
What exactly do you think goes on up in that brain of yours? It’s a mass of neurons, neurotransmitters, blood vessels, and CSF fluid. Are you asking for the science to back that up? That’s gradeschool science Lisa. What else do you think is up there? Our bodies are giant chemical factories — we are made of chemicals. When something goes wrong, it IS chemical in nature — no matter what the organ. Problems that are chemical in nature can be solved by chemicals. If you believe depression is spiritual in nature, then chemicals will be of no use of course. Visit a priest or talk to God. But that’s the realm of church — not of medical doctors and scientists.
Nathan
Nancy,
I’m not going to shut up. I’ve worked in this industry for 7 years. I’ve been nothing but honest and filled with good intent for the patients we are looking out for. I’ve worked with countless hard-working and honest individuals. I’m speaking from first-hand experience that what we publish in peer-reviewed journals is, to the best of our abilities, honest and complete. I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m defending the honest and hardworking people that I spend 5 days a week with. Unlike what you folks would like to believe, dishonesty and fraud are not rampant in this industry. The industry employs tens of thousands of scientists. There are bad apples in every lot. We have them here too. But they are few and far between. Your assertions otherwise are despicable and reproachable.
As I’ve said many times on this website, we have no incentive to be dishonest. It would ruin my career. If my project succeeds, I make virtually no money from it. I don’t have an incentive for dishonesty. The same holds true for the vast majority of scientists here.
Nancy
I’m out of here.
Who wants to argue with someone who thinks fraud and lies don’t matter, or who changes the topic when asked about actual events. Nathan is an anonymous industry paid troll.
Bye.
Jane
Again Nathan, answer the questions that have been presented.
You continually try to convience us that everyones problems are because of chemical imbalances but yet you still have not presented any evidence this is in fact the case. You have been asked for your opinion regarding one specific report, not whether or not a chemical imbalance is at play here.
S
“4) No matter how you want to say it, depression IS caused by some sort of chemical imbalance. Your brain is a mass of neurons that are constantly sending chemical messages back and forth with one another. When something goes wrong up there, it is due to some sort of a chemical signaling pathway gone awry.”
Ah, yes. Looks like happiness would then be a chemical imbalance as well, no?
Nancy
I thought I would come in one last time having said goodby - because this is quite amusing.
a) I am told that “Your assertions otherwise are despicable and reproachable.”
Actually I made no assertions at all except that Nathan was avoiding the actual questions. That is according to Nathan despicable and reproachable.
b) Nathan now says “Nancy, I’m not going to shut up”.
Actually I didn’t ask this person to shut up. I suggested that he answer the question or shut up.
If you want to be a really good industry troll Nathan, a lesson in logic and meaningful debate would not go amiss. You were too easily rattled and revealed your true self.
Finally, Bye
Nathan
Jane, why should I answer the question posed? I didn’t get into this arguement to offer an opinion on a specific case. Frankly, I’m probably not even qualified to offer an opinion. I got into this debate by pointing out that we (as an industry) are pursuing drugs that will hopefully be far more effective in treating depression than SSRIs. I never claimed to be an expert in scientific fraud. I never stated that fraud didn’t take place. I’m simply stating that it isn’t rampant and that most of us in the industry are honest and well-intentioned scientists.
As for the chemical imbalance issue, I’ll again point to some grade school science: I’m no expert in this field. However, I am well aware that we ARE made of chemicals. Nothing more. All physical ailments in life are chemical in nature — this includes mental ailments. Problems in life are either spiritual or physical. God treats the former and scientists treat the latter.
Nathan
Absolutely — happiness is a chemical balance. Not necessarily an “imbalance”, but it could be. Caffiene alters my brain chemistry to make me happy — that’s for sure.
Nancy
“Frankly, I’m probably not even qualified to offer an opinion.”
Exactly, you said it yourself
Over and out
Nathan
Nancy, I’m qualified to offer an opinion on the general honesty, integrity, and intentions of the scientists who work in this industry. That’s what I’m defending here. As I keep saying, I really have no interest in a specific case of scientific fraud. Keep coming back though — I enjoyed it.
Matthew Holford
Nathan wrote:
“Rubber stamping? Is that was you call the FDA’s continual rejection and “approvable” letters that delay and deny approval of our drugs???..”
I feel terribly for your industry, that you are unable to race your new products into production as quickly as you would like, so that you can factor them in to your cashflows. Sorry, that should read “so that you can assist people in doing more, living longer and feeling better”.
I know nothing of the FDA’s procedures, but I’m pretty clear on the MHRA’s, which I imagine are similar. Regrettably, the MHRA Chairman has already dropped your industry in it, on that score. He told a recent Parliamentary investigation into the influence of the Worshipful Company that “trust” underpinned the relationship. Given what it had discovered elsewhere, the Health Select Committee inferred that this extended to assessment. I cross-questioned the MHRA on this point, and was flannelled, stonewalled, and eventually told that I was vexatious and to piss off, basically.
The whole thing’s a sham, Nathan - a great, big con. That’s my opinion, and there’s nothing that I have to hand that disproves that. More to the point, the MHRA appears unwilling, or, more likely, unable to disprove that.
Matt
Laurie
“What exactly do you think goes on up in that brain of yours? It’s a mass of neurons, neurotransmitters, blood vessels, and CSF fluid. ”
True. It’s a poorly understood collection of functions that make us human. If it was a concrete process, then I wouldn’t have a problem with the assertation that “depression is caused by a chemical imbalance”. But it’s not a concrete process. A highly functioning human being has a homeostasis of these processes. A “depressed” person has not achieved that homeostatic state. The question is ….what is out of whack that is creating the pathology of depression? A big unknown. So randomly altering neurotransmitters is far from concrete treatment of a condition with an unknown cause.
This applies to every function in the body. We used to treat diabetes without knowing what the blood sugar was. Far from a optimal way to treat, as evidenced by the deaths due to hypo and hyper glycemia. The same situation applies to those being “treated” for depression with ssri’s. We are altering neurochemistry without knowing what “normal” is. This is far from a specific treatment with a specific cause. Giving a 13 year old, 80 pound child the same dose of a drug as a 250 pound 50 year old man, highlights the disfunction of the treatment.
So while I agree that we are a organism functioning due to a “bunch of neurons”, altering those neurons functions without a known normal is a crapshoot….which we have found out.
Depression is a real problem, but we are far from determining it’s cause, and the random altering of brain chemistry can have good, and bad results. If someone feels better on a drug, good for them. But denying a bad reaction of that same drug in an individual is dangerous and unethical. That’s the key point…this treatment process is not cut and dried…and neither are the patient responses, but sadly those who’s experience has not been positive are ignored and left on their own to deal with the ramifications of that drug use.
truthman30
happiness is a chemical balance Nathan? …
Man you are so silly..
You should read some of the Dalai Lamas work ..
Nathan
Thanks for your comments Laurie — I agree with the vast majority of what you said.
However, I’ll point out that we treat conditions all the time without a complete understanding of the underlying science. There are blockbuster drugs out there that work well for which we don’t understand the mechanism. We have almost no understanding of why cancer drugs work miracles in some patients and complete fail in others. We (as an industry) should be more vocal about the unknowns and the risks inherent in treatment of diseases — especially CNS diseases. However, we should continue to try, in spite of our poor understanding. No — we don’t know why altering brain chemistry fails to work in many (or most) cases. However, it strongly appears to work in some cases. We shouldn’t just throw our hands into the air and say “we failed!” That seems to be the attitude of pg, truthman, Matthew H., and others. The brain is just too complicated — so lets give up. That’s not my attitude and I hope that isn’t the general public’s attitude.
Bruce
First of all, thanks to Ed for this forum. I think we all appreciate the discussion.
Nathan, I appreciate the fact that you believe you need to stand up for an industry that I have worked in for 20 years, but sometimes you come off as drinking the kool aid. The industry has issues that it needs to honestly address and so far, there has not been any leadership shown in this area.
BTW, you should see the original corporate video. The music is the same, so I wonder how Bob got that?
Laurie
“We (as an industry) should be more vocal about the unknowns and the risks inherent in treatment of diseases — especially CNS diseases. ”
Exactly!! Look, I don’t demonize pharma..far from it. As a nurse I see the amazing things that drugs can do. In this case the blatant simplization of a massively complex process is not good for anyone. Patients should know that the use of this category of drugs is trial and error, AND recognize that error for what it truly is, a drug/withdrawal reaction, not a patient failure.
truthman30
:” seems to be the attitude of pg, truthman, Matthew H., and others. The brain is just too complicated — so lets give up. That’s not my attitude and I hope that isn’t the general public’s attitude” Says Nathan..
Nathan , I don’t know how many times I have explained to you why Drugs will never “cure” or “heal” problems related to the “human condition” ..
The problem with scientists of your ilk , is that while you genuinely believe that you are doing what you do for the benefit of mankind, you are actually completely misguided and really quite deluded…
The CNS (SSRI, Anti-psychotic) drugs are highly lucrative, whether they work or not is not the issue for the pharma companies. If they can be marketed as “effective” and then that’s all that matters.
Psychiatric medications are useless and will always be useless..
Tricking the brain into a false sense of wellbeing while ignoring underlying issues will always fail…
Stop tinkering with peoples brain chemistry .
It is completely arrogant of you to continue to push that agenda..
Particularly since you seem to have no understanding of the “human and condition” ..
But more importantly you seem to have no understanding of the “illnesses” you are trying to treat..
You boil everything down to brain chemistry, with no scientific proof of this and you continue to ignore the socio- economic factors for these illnesses..
Until you realize why these illnesses manifest, you really have no place trying to treat them
Although, the least you could do is the following..
If you insist on pushing your pills , please make sure you do adequate clinical trials and publish the negative studies..
And please try and make drugs which don’t make the patient worse..
The SSRI’s are horrible drugs..
And i wouldn’t even poison a rat with them..
Former pharma Marketing Exec
Nathan,
You have your work cut out for you here, bu I just want to make some clarifications on what you said to me:
Nathan:” 7 years in the pharmaceutical industry. I work for an industry that has saved millions and millions of lives. We have kept babies from getting sick, delayed the onset of dementia in the elderly, and given cancer patients precious extra months with their family. We do this through the use of honest and transparent science.”
Response: I agree, I did not say now, or ever that this doesn’t happen. When I comment on this site, I am commenting on the incidences reported here. Which, to my knowledge, are factual bona fide instances of misrepresentations of data and clinical work.
Nathan: “Not everyone agrees with the science done — even as scientists we disagree with one another. That doesn’t make us unethical. Marketing people (like you supposedly used to be) do occasionally oversell our products. But remember — a pharmaceutical company is unable to prescribe a drug to anyone. Only a treating physician can do that. I hope that the “righteous anger” that you portray also extends to them.
response: As I have said on every occasion I have had, the problem is with marketing! We are the ones driving this insanity. The anti depression pill works well in severe depression. The marketing department came up with all the plots and schemes about how to sell it to a bigger market. We can’t blame the scientist for it. What I can blame them for is not protesting enough and going along with it. Now, this comment applies only to those situations where the science clearly indicates that the drug should not be as broadly marketed as it is. In other words, what is the problem with the system where it overrides the science? That is what has to be fixed.
So, I hope that also answers you final questions. Yes, I do think it is despicable that doctors “cave in” as well. I have said time and time again: if you are bringing a case to trial regarding data that has been misrepresented, then the primary investigators and all members of the study team must also be brought to court. This is the only way this can be stopped.
If I didn’t care about the industry, I wouldn’t waste my time commenting…
Self righteous…No, this comes with over 18 years in the business and seeing many things. The “Former” in my moniker gives me a chance to make the changes. Or as Gandhi said “We must be the change we wish to see in this world”..
BE THE CHANGE!
Nathan
pg says: “Psychiatric medications are useless and will always be useless..”
God must have divinely inspired this belief in you. However, He has not inspired such a belief in me. Your statement is one completely of faith. You cannot predict the future any more than I can. If you want to throw your hands in the air and give up — so be it. But it is nonsensical and frankly, unethical, of you to try and stop the development of important medications that treat debilitating and horrible mental diseases.
truthman30
Nathan
pg says: “Psychiatric medications are useless and will always be useless..”
“God must have divinely inspired this belief in you. However, He has not inspired such a belief in me. Your statement is one completely of faith. You cannot predict the future any more than I can. If you want to throw your hands in the air and give up — so be it. But it is nonsensical and frankly, unethical, of you to try and stop the development of important medications that treat debilitating and horrible mental diseases. Says Nathan.. ”
Actually Nathan, I said that.. Not pg …, you misquoted ..
And No Nathan, god did not inspire any belief in me, I use my own mind and I am not religious ..
While we are on the subject of GOD though, do you think you have a divine right to be PLAYING GOD with peoples minds, brains , lives and personalities?..
It seems that it is ego which is your driving force..
Lisa Van S
Nathan,
“Mental Diseases”,… Im sure you meant to say disorder. Unless of course their has been newly approved medical diagnostic testing to determine that a disease is present,..like syphillis.
Nathan
Lisa — that’s a good point. There are biochemical tests being developed for schizophrenia. If we can come up with a biochemical marker for mental disease then it will make testing drugs and testing various medical hypotheses much easier. In the meantime we’ll have to use a more crude system. A doctor can diagnose a broken leg without an x-ray, you know. We don’t always need a biochemical marker in order to know when something has gone awry.
Truthman (and pg), I apologize for misquoting you. I’m glad you used your own mind to come up with your opinions. I used my own mind for form my opinion. Please do not impose your opinions on myself or on others. You are free to not take any medication you want. There are very few people in society who are forcibly administered psychiatric medication. Most choose to do so freely. I hope that they remain free to do so.
pg
Nathan, you said: “pg says: “Psychiatric medications are useless and will always be useless..”
I didn’t actually say that, someone else did, about 2 or 3 comments above yours.
Did you get to read the Glenmullen Report that Aubrey Blumsohn mentioned? There’s a link about it at:
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2008/02/gsk-needs-to-respond-re-paxil-suicide.html
“The New Scientist reports (below) that unsealed court documents–including an expert report by Harvard psychiatrist, Joseph Glenmullen, MD–reveal that GlaxoSmithKline knew as early as 1989 that there was an 8-fold increased risk of suicide for patients taking Paxil. Yet, the company did not acknowledge the risk to the public until 2006…”
Matthew Holford
Nathan wrote:
“…We shouldn’t just throw our hands into the air and say “we failed!” That seems to be the attitude of pg, truthman, Matthew H., and others. The brain is just too complicated — so lets give up…”
Au contraire, Nathan. I asked you once before, on a different thread, what depression was, and you made no attempt to answer.
We know that the placebo effect is real, and we know that neuroplasticity is real. Perhaps if we understood these things a little better, then we would understand mental illness better. I doubt that even the most cunningly concocted chemical formula is capable of remedying a lifetime of being told that one is less valuable than others, though.
Do you know, the most intelligent person that I have ever met said to me, a propos nothing “I’ve been to the moon, you know”. That’s where you and I differ, Nathan: when somebody says something that is outside my experience, I’m thrilled by the discovery. What I don’t do is tell them that they are talking crap. Unless they tell me that first, of course.
Matt
truthman30
“In the meantime we’ll have to use a more crude system” Says Nathan
So Nathan, you admit yourself that your drug methods and diagnostic systems are CRUDE? .. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of people destroyed from these Crude meds..
“Please do not impose your opinions on myself or on others. You are free to not take any medication you want. There are very few people in society who are forcibly administered psychiatric medication. Most choose to do so freely. I hope that they remain free to do so” Says Nathan
I am not imposing my opinions, I am voicing them ..
And anyway ..it is pharma who imposes its devious and deceitful opinions through Key opinion leaders (Pharma whores) and fraudulent marketing and advertising…
And there is a substantial number of people who are forced these meds , coercion is the same as force ..
When people are not given a choice but to take meds then how is that fair?..
When people are not told about the side effects until after the damage is done, is that fair? ..
You are so deluded Nathan, Either that or you are a pharma Troll..
Or both..
pg
Truthman, apologies re repeating what you said, but when I started that (my last) comment, your post before mine wasn’t there and I’d not quite finished posting the extract from the link when a friend called. A bit rude to go straight to the pc and finish it so left it about probably 15 minutes or so, then apologised that I had to just finish it off and posted it.
Just got back here and can see you (plus Lisa and Nathan) had commented in the short time gap I’d left my comment on hold.
truthman30
No worries pg, always good to have you around anyway..
:)
pg
Thanks Truthman, same goes for you. :-)
pg
I’m really tired, but also rather concerned by this attempt to allay the fears of expectant mothers which seems to be an attempt to ‘disprove’ established scientific evidence that the chemicals in antidepressants harm the unborn child and maybe I’m wrong, BUT this is how I see this particular group at the moment:
http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/April2008/01/c9372.html
DATED 1st April 2008.
“Use of antidepressant drug paroxetine in early pregnancy does not increase risk of cardiovascular birth defects
TORONTO, April 1 /CNW/ - No association has been found between the use of the antidepressant paroxetine in the first trimester of pregnancy and an increased risk of heart defects in exposed infants according to a study conducted by researchers at The Motherisk Program of The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and the University of Toronto.Their findings are published online today in the American Journal of Psychiatry….”
Looking at the record of ‘MOTHERISK’ this comes up (amongst other things):
http://www.sogc.org/jogc/abstracts/full/200608_DrugsinPregnancy_1.pdf
“MOTHERISK ROUNDS
Ruminative Worrying During Pregnancy:
A Case Series
Adrienne Einarson, RN,1 Vivien K. Burt, MD, PhD,2 Delia Patroi, MD,3 Bev Young, MD4
1The Motherisk Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto ON
2 The Women’s Life Center of The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles CA
3Alexian Brothers Behavioral Health Hospital, Hoffman Estates IL
4Clinical Director, Perinatal Mental Health, Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto ON…
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The women whose stories are told in this case report have provided signed permission for its publication.
Dr Vivien Burt is a consultant to Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline and is on the speakers and advisory boards of Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Forest...”
How, just HOW can so many people, websites, etc, be so CRUEL to INFLICT THIS TRAGEDY ON OTHER HUMAN BEINGS by spreading information from people with conflicts of interest this way? Its just AWFUL.
Apologies to everyone if I’ve got it wrong, but I if I haven’t - just what kind of people will run websites and spread information that will knowingly use misinfo to deny earlier evidence and so kill babies?
pg
Should have put in bold the link from MOTHERUSK to show what I meant?
“MOTHERISK ROUNDS
Ruminative Worrying During Pregnancy:
A Case Series
Adrienne Einarson, RN,1 Vivien K. Burt, MD,…
Dr Vivien Burt is a consultant to Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline and is on the speakers and advisory boards of Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Forest…”
What happened to human society that they can kill the infants of their own species so easily for their own means? I just don’t understand. We are the planets most intelligent? And the planet’s biggest predator? AND we kill our own?
Sounds like the beginning of the end for a species somehow, because we didn’t know when to stop predatory behaviour?
pg
HOW CAN ADULT HUMAN BEINGS DO THAT TO UNBORN HUMAN CHILDREN?
Can anyone explain to me how the intentional destruction of unborn infants of our species for the financial good of a few individuals happens to be due to some scientific concern for the health/survival of our species?
Anyone?
Nathan?
Anyone else?
Nathan
pg,
If you get that upset over pregnant women taking SSRIs, I hope you get even more upset over legalize abortions.
Laurie
“If you get that upset over pregnant women taking SSRIs, I hope you get even more upset over legalize abortions.”
Wow, that’s a HUGE stretch, even for you Nathan. But in case you really believe this I’ll point out the obvious.
Abortion has a known result and is done with fully informed consent.
Ssri use during pregancy(at least using the Toronto study) is safe and will not harm your child..even with FDA warnings that contradict this doctor provided information. Far from informed consent, or even accurate information.
another video commentary on bob fiddaman and GlaxoSmithKline « Missisyphus’s Weblog
[...] An Angry Blogger And Free Speech (Ed Silverman of Pharmalot and the Star-Ledger of New Jersey) [...]
Nathan
Laurie,
That’s not a huge jump. Here are pg’s statements:
“What happened to human society that they can kill the infants of their own species so easily for their own means?”
“We are the planets most intelligent? And the planet’s biggest predator? AND we kill our own?”
It sounds like he’s talking about abortion to me. Oh well. I guess he’s talking about covering up the fact that SSRI’s can damage a fetus? If so, why is so upset at the killing? It seems like he should be more upset about the lying. It’s hard to follow pg’s logic sometimes… Then again, I guess it’s hard for him to follow my logic sometimes.
A. Non Mouse
Hey. This isn’t about Benbow. This is about them watching for any legal infringement so they can shut down any effective voice keeping negative information about GSK and Paxil/Seroxat in the air.
They can’t legally do anything until someone steps over the line. They have pharmaph*cks combing all these blogs and comments, just looking for legal. Benbow probably didn’t even hear about this, maybe hasn’t yet. He’s not the point.
This is not about Benbow. It’s about silencing. Monbiot wrote about this in 2002 in the Guardian, when he outed Monsanto doing this with trolls on all the antiagro boards.
The blogger who started this, who posted the video; this is your time. Roll with it. Feel honoured. You’re taking all those who can’t do what you’ve done along with you.
Stand tall.
Galileo
This comments section made me laugh out loud. Sorry Nathan, looks like you got swarmed by some right wing anti-science trolls!! You’re a good sport for trying to actually explain that yes, brain disorders like depression are due to a chemical imbalance. Next time, though, I wouldn’t bother - these guys don’t want to hear the real truth.
BOB FIDDAMAN
Bruce wrote:
BTW, you should see the original corporate video. The music is the same, so I wonder how Bob got that?
I saw their own corporate video on youtube some time ago. The song is very powerful. My video was basically a rebuttal of what GSK stood/stand for. It was entirely up to the viewer to make his/her own decision.
Same goes for a new video of mine. This time there is no rebuttal - just quotes from GSK personnel.
Watch the video then click on the 4 links below.
http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-fiddaman-video.html
Matthew Holford
Galileo wrote:
“This comments section made me laugh out loud. Sorry Nathan, looks like you got swarmed by some right wing anti-science trolls!!.”
“These guys don’t want to hear the truth”? I’m struck by the irony of that. The Worshipful Company has positioned itself such that it will not listen to anybody who chooses to complain about the way that it conducts its business - what that business is is anybody’s guess, seeing as the veil of secrecy is very nearly complete (right up to the point where it presents its science to patients, that is).
Perhaps you can provide me with a detailed account of the assessment process? If not, then I would be careful about being dismissive of people who know a great deal more about this subject than you do, by the looks of things.
Matt
pg
This might also, though perhaps less ‘directly’, be a useful link alongside the Fiddaman Blogspot video?
A review, dated 1st March 2008, of the book
“A Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment” by Joanna Moncrieff, BmedSci, MBBS, MSc, MD, MRCPsych
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0803/08030301
“…Although psychiatrists commonly talk of psychiatric drugs correcting a ‘chemical imbalance’, there is in fact no proof that such an imbalance exists – hence the notion of a drug ‘correcting’ such an imbalance is meaningless.
In fact, argues Dr Moncrieff, psychiatric drugs ‘work’ by creating abnormal brain states, which are often unpleasant, and which impair normal intellectual and emotional functions, along with other harmful consequences.
This misleading situation, says Dr Moncrieff, has arisen because it serves the interests of the psychiatric profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the modern state. Over time, these interests have led to a distortion of knowledge, deluding society since the 1960s that a ‘chemical cure’ is possible in psychiatry…”
Lisa Van S
Galileo,
Ive asked Nathan,.. now I will ask you. Provide me with the science based information, that, backs up your claim that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance!
Well at least you got that depression is a disorder,.. not a disease
Nathan
Lisa,
Here are some references. I don’t believe that I ever said that depression is always CAUSED by a chemical imbalance. Certainly it can be. My point was that, regardless of the cause, the RESULT is a change in brain biochemistry or signaling. If we treat the brain biochemistry issue, then we’ll hopefully have something modestly effective.
I found these by a quick pubmed search. They simply show that the level of various chemicals in the brain, CSF, and blood are different in depressed vs. non-depressed people. Whether they are causative isn’t known of course. The only way to find out if they are causative is to try to modulate them as see if it has an effect. That’s the way we test a hypothesis in drug discovery. There are a huge number of biological targets that we are pursuing with small molecules including the seratonin receptors, glucocorticoid receptors, corticotropin releasing factor receptors, etc.
Here’s the refs:
Neurotransmitter, peptide and cytokine processes in relation to depressive disorder: Comorbidity between depression and neurodegenerative disorders.
Prog Neurobiol. 2008 Feb 13; [Epub ahead of print]
In patients with heart failure elevated soluble TNF-receptor 1 is associated with higher risk of depression.
J Card Fail. 2007 Nov;13(9):738-43.
The relationship between cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and depression in elderly women.
Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2007 Oct;15(10):832-8.
Evidence of an association between the vasopressin V1b receptor gene (AVPR1B) and childhood-onset mood disorders.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007 Oct;64(10):1189-95.
Serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels in conversion disorder: Comparative study with depression.
Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2007 Oct;61(5):571-3.
Serum levels of folate and cobalamin are lower in depressed than in nondepressed hemodialysis subjects.
J Ren Nutr. 2007 Sep;17(5):343-9.
HorusCat
Nathan!!
I’m sorry bud, I was out of pocket yesterday, driving to bama to see my Mom and Dad with the jabbering masses in tow. Actually, I gave them some Zyrim and it shut them up for hours. (I know YOU will get the joke.)
I would have been here to chime in with you, even though I have decided that this is like arguing with my dog. Nothing you say will penetrate because they are like that guy who got caught in a lie and said, “That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.” They have no perception of you as a human being, only as fraudulent monster out to kill hundreds of unsuspecting sheeple.
Hey, if you are comfortable, email Ed and ask him if he will hook us up with each other’s emails.
Hang in there, buddy!!! You are a good man!!
HorusCat
Nathan,
There is a researcher at our VA who is doing incredible work on the genomics of the mood, thought and addiction disorders. He is finding areas of overlap between the disorders and unique genes where no overlap occurs.
It’s funny–on the Turner blog piece, I responded to truthman with a whole essay on how I think brain chemistry, environment and experience interact to produce mood disorders in some people. (I think schizophrenia is a somewhat different animal.) I acknowledged that drugs are, in a sense, a band-aid. They are the bandage that we put on the brain while we do the hard work of healing our pain–with whatever methods fit in with our faith and worldview. I say whatever methods because for some, that may mean prayer and meditation, for others, CBT and group therapy, 12 step programs, counseling, psychoanalysis…But I think that medication and emotional work go hand-in-hand.
What was interesting, Nathan, is that he then never responded to me. I notice that when someone like you or me posts with a reasoned assessment of the industry and the work being done, especially in the CNS area, it is like a bleeding tuna thrown into a swarm of sharks. My first reaction is always to get agitated about it, then I decided I just have to sit back and laugh, because SSRIs and other neuroleptics are here to stay. I have to remember that this is a VERY vocal minority that haunt these websites…so while attempting to converse with them is an interesting exercise, that is all it is, an exercise. (In futility, I might add.)
I’m with you, bud, anyone who can fret over the small risk to an unborn baby posed by an SSRI while ignoring the thousands aborted every day has a need to re-examine her priorities…
Jane
“This comments section made me laugh out loud. Sorry Nathan, looks like you got swarmed by some right wing anti-science trolls!! You’re a good sport for trying to actually explain that yes, brain disorders like depression are due to a chemical imbalance. Next time, though, I wouldn’t bother - these guys don’t want to hear the real truth.”
Galileo, This is a very funny comment in and of itself. It use to be in the 60’s and 70’s pharma could pass everything off on the “right wing anti-science (trolls)” because when people were injured as a direct result of medications they had no effective means to pass this information on.Today however is a different story. See, today there is the internet and there are many many people who are pissed off because they or their loved ones where hurt badly because of psychotropic medications. You use to be able to get away with calling everyone Scientologist, anti-psychiatrist, and now “anti-science”, this is no longer effective and reveals your desperation. Call these people anything you want, as more and more people come off these medications or attempt to come off these medications and find they can’t, this small but vocal crowd is going to grow.
Jane
“They are the bandage that we put on the brain while we do the hard work of healing our pain–with whatever methods fit in with our faith and worldview.” Horuscat
This is where science has fucked up big time. Once you have messed up the chemical in the brain with these medications you have made it impossible to heal.
Nathan
Jane says:
“Call these people anything you want, as more and more people come off these medications or attempt to come off these medications and find they can’t, this small but vocal crowd is going to grow.”
I agree — that is a great asset of the internet today. If you’ll look back though my posts, you’ll find that I never claimed that these drugs were without serious side effects. I never claimed that companies are faultless. My primary argument is against Truthman, pg, and Matthew who claim that the drugs are completely ineffective, should be withdrawn from the market, and are part of a massive conspiracy between the drug companies and regulatory agencies.
Drug companies should be completely honest in their advertising and marketing about the science. As I hear over and over again on this website, we as an industry often aren’t honest and transparent. That is just as despicable as some of the crazy claims of conspiracy that Matthew, pg, and Truthman make.
pg
This study (one of the ones posted by Nathan):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17720104
“J Ren Nutr. [Journal of Renal Nutrition] 2007 Sep;17(5):343-9
“Serum levels of folate and cobalamin are lower in depressed than in nondepressed hemodialysis subjects.
“…CONCLUSION: As with the general population, lower serum folate, RBC folate, and serum cobalamin levels were found in depressed as compared to nondepressed subjects on HD. Plasma levels of these VITAMINS may be one of many factors related to depression, but larger studies with stronger designs are needed to confirm the results of this study…”
Isn’t this study pointing more towards the idea that treating depression with psychoactive drugs is not actually addressing the issue - a lack of VITAMINS looks very much like nutritional problems, not a ‘chemical imbalance of serotonin theory that atypical antidepressants can ‘correct’?
A shortage of vitamins is not a shortage of fluoxetine, paroxetine and the rest.
Nutrition and its importance to our health is not what the theory of ‘a chemical imbalance’ is about. The chemical imbalance theory in depression is one promoted to sell psychoactive drugs, not healthy living, and it is that theory I believe Lisa is referring to.
HorusCat
Jane,
You are wrong about the permanent effects of the meds. The proof is in the millions of people out there who have used them and no longer do. You concentrate on a small, vocal minority. The untold millions, literally millions, that have no adverse sequelae never get on a site on the internet and post. They just go about their lives and never think another thing of it. That is my point, which I will make over and over: you have no perspective. You think that because you are in contact with some people on the internet who make their opinions loud and clear, there must be an army of people out there who feel as you do. The exact opposite is true. There are millions of people out there who would look at you like you have your head screwed on backward.
The same situation occurs with very politically active people on whatever side of the equation. They belong to moveon.org or a similar right-side organization. They lobby their congresspeople, they blog, they tune in to Hannity & Colmes and the Sunday talk shows…they think that everyone is up on the political scene. Then you find out that 90% of Americans don’t even know who the secretary of state is, and they’re not even sure who the vice president is.
I get on this site and I think that everyone knows everything about the pharmaceutical industry…then I hire a personal trainer at the gym, and when he finds out what I do, he says, “So, you, like, do what all day?”
I see the same self-selection with physicians who use the internet. They believe that every doc out there is busy using the internet to keep up on medical advances….little do they know that many of their peers barely know how to turn a computer on…
HorusCat
If depression were due to malnutrition, you would see rampant depression in third world countries, where malnutrition is the norm. This does not occur. To note that depressed persons have a vitamin deficiency does not prove causality. Find a placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized clinical trial of thousands of people where vitamin supplementation showed a significant improvement in depressive symptoms, and I’ll listen.
HorusCat
Jane says:
“Call these people anything you want, as more and more people come off these medications or attempt to come off these medications and find they can’t, this small but vocal crowd is going to grow.”
The SSRIs have been on the market for 20 years. The average person fills a Zoloft scrip 3 times. That’s a lot of people who have stopped these drugs successfully. I tried to google exactly how many prescriptions for SSRIs have been written, but couldn’t find it. Two decades is long enough that I think this small but vocal crowd has grown about as much as it is going to….
And let’s think about the number of those people who have some sort of personality disorder (borderline, anyone?) that makes them more likely to have this sort of experience…(that ought to wind you up).
pg
HC: I merely commented on the content of a study Nathan posted. It does say that further studies are needed re vitamins.
What it does NOT say is that the ‘depression is caused by a chemical imbalance’ of a particular neurotransmitter/s that needs treating by a particular type of drug is in any way proven.
The study says nothing about a chemical imbalance in serotonin, dopamine, etc, as used to ensure the wide-spread use of psychoactive drugs.
As far as I can see NONE of those studies prove that the “Depression is Caused by a Chemical Imbalance that an SSRI, or SNRI can Correct” is proven.
As far as I can see, Lisa was referring to the ‘drug industry’s’ Chemical Imbalance Theory. Not theories regarding proteins, or vitamins, or cholesterol levels, etc.
Nathan
pg says:
“What it does NOT say is that the ‘depression is caused by a chemical imbalance’ of a particular neurotransmitter/s that needs treating by a particular type of drug is in any way proven.”
pg, I hate to inform you of this, but vitamins ARE chemicals. My point was levels of particular chemicals in your bloodstream and in your CNS fluid are related to depression. Modulating the levels of those chemicals (whether through drugs or nutrition) can have an effect on the symptoms.
Nathan
pg, you are implying that the drug industry definatively believes that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance alone. That just isn’t true. Here’s some quotes from GSK’s Paxil website. Do you disagree with any of these statements?
———————
“Depression may be related to a chemical imbalance in the brain. Serotonin is one of these chemicals. One way to treat it is to adjust the levels of serotonin.”
“One of the most frustrating things about depression is that many times there is not just one cause. As with physical illness, many factors may contribute to the development of depression.
“Genetics….Hormones and biochemicals… Anxiety… Stress… Self-esteem.” (each are described in detail)…
For many people with depression, a combination of factors is responsible.”
“When you are treated for depression, you may see both a medical doctor and a therapist, depending on the course of treatment your doctor decides is right for you.”
“It is likely to take several weeks of treatment before you notice a change in how you feel. You might need to continue some kind of treatment — medication or psychotherapy — even after you feel better to help keep you from having recurring episodes of depression. Ask your doctor how long you need to stick with your depression treatment — and follow the advice you are given.”
Nathan
In regards to the risk, again they seem quite open on honest to me. These support exactly the claims you guys have been making. If the manufacturer is honest about the side effects, then what is the problem? Here’s what they say about withdrawal and about potential damage to unborn babies:
“Don’t stop taking Paxil CR before talking to your doctor since side effects may result from stopping the medicine, particularly when abrupt. Symptoms some patients have reported on stopping
Paxil CR include: dizziness, sensory disturbances (including electric shock sensations and tinnitus), abnormal dreams, agitation, anxiety, nausea, sweating, mood fluctuations, headache, fatigue, nervousness and sleep disturbances.”
Tell your doctor if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant, as there is a potential risk to the fetus with paroxetine. Some studies of paroxetine in pregnant women have suggested an increased risk of heart malformations. In addition, babies born to mothers who have taken antidepressants, including SSRIs such as Paxil CR, in the latter half of pregnancy have reported complications, including difficulties with breathing, turning blue, seizures, changing body temperature, feeding problems, vomiting, low blood sugar, floppiness, stiffness, tremor, shakiness, irritability or constant crying. Tube feeding, help with breathing, and longer hospitalization may be needed. There have also been reports of premature births in pregnant women exposed to SSRIs, including Paxil CR.
Like many antidepressants, Paxil CR can be present in breast milk so tell your doctor if you are nursing.
pg
I agree with you Jane. Psych drug petitions (re damage on them and/or difficulty coming off them) are a bit of an example, they’re growing longer daily and between the few I’m aware of they contain tens of thousands of signatures. Awareness is growing and is still in its early days yet.
Re permanent side effects of psychiatric drugs: they certainly don’t appear to have developed a cure for the permanent side effects they can visibly see (now appearing from the use of antidepressants as well as antipsychotics) such as Dyskinesias,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zwe_hgOyE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0EbgpyztCA
or Dystonias.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCo82bv5lRM
(Jane said:
“Call these people anything you want, as more and more people come off these medications or attempt to come off these medications and find they can’t, this small but vocal crowd is going to grow.”
and
“This is where science has fucked up big time. Once you have messed up the chemical in the brain with these medications you have made it impossible to heal.”)
truthman30
Nathan
In regards to the risk, again they seem quite open on honest to me. These support exactly the claims you guys have been making. If the manufacturer is honest about the side effects, then what is the problem? Here’s what they say about withdrawal and about potential damage to unborn babies:
Nathan…
You are one Grade A Dickhead !!!
Yes Glaxo warn NOW about these side effects, but FOR MANY YEARS THEY DID NOT ..
THE PUBLIC HAS BECOME THE CLINICAL TRIAL
this kind of practice where drugs are passed quickly without adequate trials , and side effects are added later as the years go by is absolutely scandalous…
If you agree and support this kind of practice by your beloved industry then you are just as guilty as the pharma execs who make decisions based on PROFIT BEFORE PEOPLE.
I kinda feel sorry for you Nathan, you have no concept of what it really means to be human, what it really means to suffer…
Nathan
“Yes Glaxo warn NOW about these side effects, but FOR MANY YEARS THEY DID NOT ..THE PUBLIC HAS BECOME THE CLINICAL TRIAL”
Were they aware about the side effects and covered them up? Then I agree - that’s is unacceptable and dispicable. If not, then that is just tough luck. We can’t find out about every side effect durring clinical trials. Many new ones come up only after they have been administered to the general population.
pg
Nathan, if they seem open and honest to you then it might be that you haven’t seen the information.
Some of the things drug makers do and say are more to do with the where they are and what restrictions they are under at any given time, rather than scientific accuracy:
For instance - article date 2005:
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392
“…The Irish equivalent of the FDA, the Irish Medical Board, recently banned GlaxoSmithKline from claiming that paroxetine corrects a chemical imbalance even in their patient information leaflets [29]…”
The same applies to industry changes of tactic on the existence of ‘discontinuation’ problems.
By the time drug makers have little choice than to stop denying withdrawal because the evidence presented for years by academics who speak up has become impossible to hide, they have made a fortune from that denial because millions of people are given the drugs.
And to ‘eventual’ reversals of claims of a drug curing a chemical imbalance. By the time they’re forced to word things differently, its too late for many.
pg
They DID know Nathan. Perhaps taking a look at the evidence would help - there’s plenty around. The comment by Aubrey Blumohn somewhere above suggested the Glenmullen report. That might be an excellent place to start.
Have a good weekend all.
Nathan
If they covered it up — again that is horrible. But you guys are berading the drug’s CURRENT status. The company should be held criminally responsible for its past actions. But that doesn’t change what is out there currently. As far as I can tell based on your guy’s comments, they are CURRENTLY being relatively honest about the drugs.
pg
“Relatively honest”? They’re STILL promoting the serotonin imbalance theory but keeping JUST within the bounds of not being accused of outright dishonesty. We clearly have a very different idea of what constitutes honesty (and thus honesty in science and medicine).
http://www.paxilcr.com/how_paxilcr_works/how_paxilcr_works.html
“…Scientific evidence suggests that depression and certain anxiety disorders may be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Paxil CR helps balance your brain’s chemistry…
…Paxil CR helps maintain a balance of serotonin levels, which may help cell-to-cell communication return to normal. Paxil CR is with you throughout the day to help you manage and treat your condition…”
Nathan
“They’re STILL promoting the serotonin imbalance theory but keeping JUST within the bounds of not being accused of outright dishonesty.”
Of course they are — it’s a theory. They state it’s a theory. Elsewhere on the website they state that depression may have many causes, only ONE of which may be serotonin imabance. The fact that SSRI’s work in some patients strongly suggest that SSRI imbalance IS at least one cause of depression.
pg
One last comment, I’m about to go out
They have promoted theories as scientific facts for years, they’ve hidden data for years, they’ve miscoded trial data for years, then when genuinely honest academics have spoken up for years about that lack of honesty, and it becomes impossible for the drug makers to continue to lie, they then choose to do as little as possible to correct what they previously and knowingly knowingly misled millions of people about by calling their theory a fact.
A lot of people were and still are being harmed, and some of those have died. A small percentage of millions of people across the world is a great number of people.
The fact that SSRIs don’t work in others and have caused brain damage such as movement disorders, seizures, strokes, damage such as cardiac problems,hemorhages, damage to unborn and newborns, etc in some patients strongly suggests that SSRIs can do a great deal of damage throughout the body.
Enjoy your day.
truthman
Were they aware about the side effects and covered them up? Then I agree - that’s is unacceptable and dispicable. If not, then that is just tough luck. We can’t find out about every side effect durring clinical trials. Many new ones come up only after they have been administered to the general population. Says Nathan
Explain this then Nathan..
Paxil(Serxoats) withdrawal syndrome was changed by GSK over the course of a few years ..
From 1 in 1000 to 1 in 3 (30%)
Is that good enough? ..
It was in Glaxos interest to deny “withdrawal” syndrome and to suppress side effects , of course it was..
If people had have realized the true side effects profile of the drug, many would never have agreed to take it…
The SSRI industry is supported by psychiatry because both need each other to sell the drugs..
You say thet the chemical imbalance theory is only a theory and that GSK have a right to base prescriptions and sell drugs based on a theory..
Well how about i make up a theory about rat poison and promote it as a diet supplement..
How about “Rat poison might help you lose weight by making you throw up”
Does that make it ok ?…
The chemical imbalance theory is a fraud which laid the foundation for the SSRI drugs..
You claim to be a reputable and ethical scientist Nathan, well why dont you grow some balls and speak the truth about whats going on, instead of defending pharma as if it’s your mothers milk…
Nathan
“Paxil(Serxoats) withdrawal syndrome was changed by GSK over the course of a few years ..From 1 in 1000 to 1 in 3 (30%) Is that good enough? ..”
No, absolutely not. It’s not good enough. As I’ve stated repeatedly, we often don’t know fully about the side effects of drugs until we hear about the complaints. If you can find documentation that GSK knew that the incidence was 1 in 3 rather than 1 in 1000, then that is good enough. Almost all prescription pain medication causes withdrawal effects. Do you want to stop selling that too?
“The chemical imbalance theory is a fraud which laid the foundation for the SSRI drugs..”
Prove it in a court of law buddy. These drugs have been on the market 20 years. That’s an aweful lot of people that would have to be involved in this supposed “fraud”.
“If people had have realized the true side effects profile of the drug, many would never have agreed to take it…”
That’s absolutely true. But that is missing the point. The point is: when were the “true” side effects known by scientists in GSK? Did they stall on releasing those side effects in order to maintain sales? THAT’S a problem. A changing side-effect profile is NOT a problem as long as honesty is maintained.
“Well how about i make up a theory about rat poison and promote it as a diet supplement..
How about “Rat poison might help you lose weight by making you throw up” Does that make it ok ?… ”
If you get your rat poison embraced by the scientific community, published in peer-reviewed journals, showing non-inferiority in clinical trials, and get it approved by the FDA, and get the public to buy it — then sure. That’s just fine.
Jane
Nathan, do yourself a favor and read the paxil doc’s. It is quiet clear GSK knew a whole lot of things before the drug was approved by the FDA.
Jane
You want to try and convience everyone that this is just a typo “Seroquel is an antidepressant drug used to treat manic depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to the Web site http://www.Seroquel.com. It is a brand name for quetiapine.” Taken from http://www.gulflive.com/news/mississippipress/index.ssf?/base/news/1207304112288740.xml
Lisa Van S
Nathan,
This is a fascinating read:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303164507.htm
AA
Horus Cat,
Have you seen the adverse affects of psych meds reported on FDAs site? I think I read somewhere that only about 10% of adverse affects are ever reported.
Do you have a link that proves what you’re saying about the number of people who have never suffered adverse affects? There aren’t any of those double binded studies about people suffering long term affects because no one is collecting the data to quote Laurie, who posts on here.
As one who has suffered number affects from these drugs that you and Nathan think are so wonderful, I am very angry that you characterize me as a vocal minority. There are plenty of people like me who have suffered immensely.
Maybe if you took these drugs that you think are so wonderful, you would have a different view. In fact, I think it should be a requirement that drug reps should have to take the drugs that they sell to doctors. Maybe then, they would lose their arrogence about people suffering side effects.
AA
Matthew Holford
Nathan wrote:
“…My primary argument is against Truthman, pg, and Matthew who claim that the drugs are completely ineffective, should be withdrawn from the market, and are part of a massive conspiracy between the drug companies and regulatory agencies…”
The drugs are not completely ineffective - but they are only as effective as placebo. As such, we are required to put up with the side effects, including (the hushed-up SAE of) suicidality, because it is regarded as unethical to prescribe placebos. How long the suicidality issue (and the rest) were hushed-up for is anybody’s guess - we’re not allowed to know that, because it’s a trade secret. On this basis, they should be withdrawn from the market, yes. Massive conspiracy? I didn’t say that - you did - I have no evidence that there is a massive conspiracy, but there is massive incompetence, at the very least; I do have proof of that. Is that OK?
Matt
pg
On the ‘honesty’ of GSK and one of quite a number of leaked GSK documents.
Dated 1997-1998
Marked
“Confidential Subject to Protective Order”
“For Consultants Information Only”
“Business Plan Guide”
“A marketing/sales guide to help you tailor your territory business plan”
This “confidential” document includes instructions on <b<how to minimize discontinuation and various other legitimate concerns about Paxil for marketing anad sales purposes.
PDF FILE
As probably the majority of people commenting here know, there’s quite a colletion of these leaked documents evidencing GSK’s definition of “honesty” and if it becomes necessary I’ll post the whole lot here in the next day or so.
I believe the drugs are extremely effective - at having remarkably damaging, sometimes deadly, side effects in any and/or all parts of the human body.
HorusCat
AA,
I do take Zoloft. As I have posted before, the judicious use of medication and psychotherapy saved my life. You ARE a vocal minority. Do the math:
20 years on the market. Probably 100 million or so prescriptions…so say, 50 million treated. 50,000 is 0.1%. That is a minority, no matter how you slice it.
And 1 in 3 experience withdrawal effects, OF SOME KIND. Could be mild, transient nausea. Don’t try to equate that with 1 in 3 experiencing serious withdrawal symptoms.
Anyone who would try to argue that for 20 years these drugs have been working in patients through the placebo effect just sounds ignorant; that argument doesn’t warrant further discussion.
truthman, you got pretty upset with me when I called you an idiot. You owe Nathan an apology.
pg
http://www.socialaudit.org.uk/58090-DH.htm
“ANTIDEPRESSANTS AND SUICIDE
BRIEFING PAPER, 20 JUNE 2003…”
“Current trials provide evidence of an antidepressant treatment effect rather than evidence that antidepressants work. This is of importance in any calculation of risk-benefit trade-offs and related warnings…
…The notion that test-retest methods as well as dose response relationships form the basis for determining causality has been endorsed by most senior figures in the field who have considered these issues. It is enshrined in the federal judicial manual. It’s presumably underpinned the CSM’s determination that benzodiazepines can lead to suicidal or homicidal behaviour and such methods are used routinely by pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Lilly and GlaxoSmithkline in assigning causality to a particular adverse effect.
A large number of documents now in the public domain show clinical monitors in Lilly, Pfizer and GSK linking suicidality to their drug. These linkages in fact extend back to the early 1980s at least and to studies in healthy volunteers…”
“…(Quite aside from causal determinations, based on these figures, there is every reason to believe that all companies have sufficient clinical trial data on file to analyse the linkage between their drug and suicidality, taking into account the range of underlying conditions treated, the dose of drug used, and the duration of exposure. Such data however remain unavailable to the academic community.)…”
pg
http://www.socialaudit.org.uk/58092-DH.htm
“SSRIs & WITHDRAWAL/DEPENDENCE
BRIEFING PAPER: 20-06-2003…
“…Dependence on and withdrawal from antidepressants has been recognised since the early 1960s.
“The withdrawal syndrome complicates the evaluation of patients after drug discontinuation since both patients and physicians often interpret the onset of symptoms as an upsurge of “anxiety” related to incipient relapse, and resume treatment with the gratifying subsidence of the “anxiety”. This may cause both patients and physicians to overvalue the importance of the medication to the patient’s stability” (Kramer et al 1961).
Therapeutic drug dependence or normal dose dependence needs to be distinguished from drug dependence of the sort caused by opiates and amphetamines.
Therapeutic drug dependence may give rise to withdrawal syndromes lasting months or more.
Companies have not been required to test their drugs for therapeutic drug dependence prior to marketing.
In the case of the SSRIs it would seem that therapeutic drug dependence has been used as a means to claim prophylactic efficacy for these drugs.
Companies’ marketing for SSRIs implies that these drugs differ from the benzodiazepines in terms of producing dependence; these claims are not warranted.
Recognition of dependence on antidepressants will provide safety for patients and a stimulus to companies to produce safer drugs.
At present under the influence of company marketing many clinicians and patients are operating with a model that claims depression is a chronic condition that may need treatment for life – this is a model with no basis in epidemiological data…”
pg
“Companies’ marketing for SSRIs implies that these drugs differ from the benzodiazepines in terms of producing dependence; these claims are not warranted.”
pg
Its still early days. The industry (which has the massive advantage of accumulated wealth and the influence it can buy) together with its marketing consultants and its KOLs have worked for years to try and suppress the evidence presented by ethical academics of the dangers of fraudulent science. There’s ample evidence of that suppression.
However, the evidence and the ‘vocals’ that show currently which are so casually dismissed as a vocal minority are just the tip of an iceberg - there is enough evidence and certainly a constantly increasing number of ‘vocals’ to last a long time to come. A lot more today than there were a year ago and ditto to the year before that.
A far smaller ‘minority’ than there is now had already succeeded (against the odds)in effecting some changes and that minority is growing all the time. History has a habit of eventually tipping the scales between majorities and minorities when the need becomes great enough. It may take years or decades, but it happens eventually.
pg
Getting back to SCIENTIFIC FRAUD which results in predictable harm.
As well described here:
“A Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment” by Joanna Moncrieff, BmedSci, MBBS, MSc, MD, MRCPsych
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0803/08030301
“…Although psychiatrists commonly talk of psychiatric drugs correcting a ‘chemical imbalance’, there is in fact no proof that such an imbalance exists – hence the notion of a drug ‘correcting’ such an imbalance is meaningless.
In fact, argues Dr Moncrieff, psychiatric drugs ‘work’ by creating abnormal brain states, which are often unpleasant, and which impair normal intellectual and emotional functions, along with other harmful consequences.
This misleading situation, says Dr Moncrieff, has arisen because it serves the interests of the psychiatric profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the modern state. Over time, these interests have led to a distortion of knowledge, deluding society since the 1960s that a ‘chemical cure’ is possible in psychiatry…”
Lisa Van S
HC,
Zoloft,… hmmmm. Last year it was Zyprexa,.. why the change?
pg
WITHDRAWAL One in 3 infants go through SSRI withdrawal. The reason these INFANTS go through this is because of scientific fraud and to keep SSRI users in addictive psychoactive drugs.
Evidence EXISTS that newborns go through withdrawal, the physical symptoms that can be seen of withdrawal. There are psychological/neurological symptoms that cant’ be seen.
Thats the same ‘cold turkey’ withdrawal that has damaged so many adults when GPs have cancelled a prescription for instance, and where even those in the last 4/5 years where withdrawal came to light are to afraid taper off …What must if feel like for newly born life? To go through cold turkey, no experience, no choice, when some adults feel they can’t even deal with tapering? But, as newly born life there is no way of expressing the terror of cold turkey withdrawal or any experience in how to cope with any neurological problems or any drug problems whatseover?
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=72
“One in 3 infants Suffer SSRI Withdrawal
Tuesday, 07 February 2006
It is astonishing how untrustworthy loosely given advice about the safety of SSRI antidepressants by medical
professionals and academic institutions…
…Throughout the years the profession has reassured women that taking antidepressants during pregnancy was preferable
to being depressed. The American Family Physician website: http://www.aafp.org/afp/20041201/fpin.html...
But then comes reality-based medicine with jolting evidence of harm to infants exposed to Paxil in utero. Reuters reports that a study in Israel found that Nearly one in three infants born to women taking anti-depressant drugs exhibit signs of withdrawal.
Withdrawal syndrome, which is acknowledged in the GSK Paxil (Seroxat) label in the UK, is not yet acknowledged in
FDA-approved labels. It is an explosive Pandora’s box that haunts patients trying to stop taking SSRIs.
Withdrawal syndrome demonstrates the addictive nature of SSRIs…”
pg
Lisa, changes in drugs may well be due to making the decision to run ’safe’ with the ‘majority’ of a “deluded public” as described at
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0803/08030301
so who don’t have the intellect any more perhaps due to the “impaired normal intellectual and emotional functions” caused by whatever psychoactive drug they’re on at the time which stops them understanding why they are unhappy with their present drug?.
Rather sad, but thats the ‘majority’ delusion at this point in time.
Thats how industry/psychs keep them fairly permanently feeling their lives depend on drugs isn’t it?
pg
Anyway Lisa, I hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend. I had a good time out earlier today, thats for sure :-)
See you another day, another page. Bye.
Matthew Holford
Horus Cat wrote:
“…Anyone who would try to argue that for 20 years these drugs have been working in patients through the placebo effect just sounds ignorant…”
It may sound ignorant, and yet it appears to be true. Glenmullen, Kirsch and Moncrieff all argue this, if you need somebody more authoratative than me. SKB acknowledged that this was true of minors, in its infamous October, 1998 memo. And NICE, the body responsible for passing drugs for use on the NHS has been aware for some time that SSRIs are only significantly more beneficial than placebo in the treatment of severe depression, hence its recommendation to doctors that other approaches be used for mild/moderate depression.
When I quizzed the MHRA on this point, it stonewalled me, and it appears to decide to never answer the most fundamental of questions - “what is the benefit of Seroxat?”. What should I deduce from that? That it knows what the benefit is, but has decided to be churlish and withhold the information from me? That it doesn’t know, which would make it incompetent or corrupt, seeing as how a risk:benefit analysis is claimed to be a fundamental element of its assessment process, and “efficacy” is the primary statutory criteria for a drug? Or that it knows that the benefit is practically non-existent, and prefers to keep that a secret, with the motivation being the damage that would be done to its own reputation, and that of the industry?
Now, you can descend into denial, if you like, but when the very people who are charged with regulating drugs on behalf of the public won’t talk to the public, and don’t appear to know the first thing about the drugs that they regulate, then that raises a flag, with me.
Matt
BOB FIDDAMAN
This debate is a breath of fresh air. It’s high time that someone connected with the pharmaceutical industry entered into a debate with concerned patients.
I disagree with some of the comments on here. The concerned patients are not some political movement. Hell, I’ve been labelled a Scientologist because of my stance on Seroxat/Paxil - not that I have anything against Scientologists but if I was one don’t you think I would be proud to state that I was?
It’s good to get discussions out in the open about SSRi’s, in particular with someone connected with the industry.
Patients, it seems, are not allowed to ask questions.
One could write to GlaxoSmithKline and ask if there were any employee who did not know of the internal documents published on the net - these documents were from 1998 and clearly showed that Seroxat/Paxil was not safe.
Since that time GSK personnel have refutely denied that they are hiding any data - the internal documents from 1998 suggest otherwise.
I thank Nathan for being a voice - I don’t nessercarily agree with him and can see this debate spiralling out of control.
I think the point here is we have an awful lot of complaints from patients about a specific product. If that product were a can of beans it would have been pulled from the shelves until an investigation had been carried out by an impartial investigator.
This is a question of morality rather than who is right and who is wrong. My personal opinion is that it is immoral to hold back information that could endanger a consumer.
The EU Law has been protecting Pharma for some considerable time - hopefully this will now change after the investigation by the MHRA into GlaxoSmithKline found them to have been guilty of holding back data.
Fid
Cancer Patient
This isn’t my area at all, but I have been fascinated by the comments….
In reading through the threads there are two things that raise a flag for me:
1.) the comment about nutritional defects and depression, the lower amount of vitamins found in people with depression. I think this plays a big role, yet it seems to have gotten underplayed here. We are only just beginning to learn about epigenetics, yet what we know so far is the the big role of what we feed ourselves ad the environment we live in. In cases of mild depression we should certainly steer clear of these drugs and change our lifestyles.
There is no point putting more chemicals in our bodes that do affect us in an epigenetic way, which probably changes the way the nutritional support would have had an affect. So, drugs should be used as an absolute last resort…
2.) To the person who made the comment on why isn’t everybody in Africa depressed, since they are malnourished. How do you know they are not?
we need to develop the field of epigenetics sooner than later - we need to stop poisoning ourselves with these drugs just so that some people can make a living.
If you think I am ungrateful, I am not. Some drugs play a role in our lives for the better. But even cancer drugs can be over sold to the point where they do not work any more.
More is not always better!
HorusCat
Lisa,
You really are willfully ignorant. It was only Zyprexa last year if I am the person you were arguing with last year, which I’m not. I don’t know why you can’t believe that more than one person would disagree with you. I would be psychotic before I took Zyprexa because I don’t want to gain weight–told you I have an eating disorder.
Jane
HC, isn’t true the drug companies hire you drug reps to go to different websites to state something like “I take zoloft (or any other psychotropic medication) for an eating disorder (or any other psychiatric disorder) and I just love it. Zoloft saved my life!” Because the drug companies
know someone else will read what you wrote and go ask their doc for a prescription?
Jane
HC, isn’t it true the drug companies hire you drug reps to go to different websites to state something like “I take zoloft (or any other psychotropic medication) for an eating disorder (or any other psychiatric disorder) and I just love it. Zoloft saved my life!” Because the drug companies
know someone else will read what you wrote and go ask their doc for a prescription?
HorusCat
Jane,
Yeah, I wish. Do you fantasize often? You people are really funny. It makes me laugh to read the stuff you come up with, so I won’t pretend to take you seriously.
truthman
“If you get your rat poison embraced by the scientific community, published in peer-reviewed journals, showing non-inferiority in clinical trials, and get it approved by the FDA, and get the public to buy it — then sure. That’s just fine” Says Nathan
Well youve kind of made my point for me Nathan…
The “SSRI” theory was “embraced” by the psyhiatric community because they were desperate to push their biological mental illness agenda..
The theory was widely expolited and then the pharmaceutical companies developed serotonin enhancing drugs (SSRI’s ..Paxil) on the back of this “theory” ..
The peer reviwed journals often have conflicts of interest (with pharma) as do the key opinion leaders (Marty Keller etc) who further perpetrated this greedy agenda thus the SSRI’s were marketed on the back of this theory..
Infiltraton by pharma of patient groups (Lundbeck - Aware-depression supprt group/Ely lilly-depression alliance UK) pushed this agenda further towards the patient..
Pharma then lavished gifts on and targetted high prescribing doctors , suppressed the real side effect profile and created devious, manipulative and dubious advertising campaigns to further reap massive profits ..
They expoited people through DTC advertising and created illness markets .. (depression as a disease) ..
SO there you go Nathan..
I could go into further detail about this SCAM..
But i doubt you would listen because you’ve got your ego shoved up your backside and thats why you speak so much BS ..
Eat more fibre.. Clear yourself out..
HorusCat
truthman,
why is it you got so self-righteously angry at me for saying you are deranged and an idiot, yet you speak in an even more malicious manner to Nathan? Could it be that you cannot tolerate a dissenting opinion? Nathan makes good sense. You and et al on this site seem unable to fathom that perhaps your views are not gospel truth.
seeme
just take the drugs and see for yourself, non beleivers, you p— me right off.Try them and see, im sure you wont have a problem getting them. Until then shut up. Thats to Nathan, HC.and the rest of you non beleivers. And GSK did hide result. search and see.
Atlex
As a side note to this dialogue (speaking loosely… Truthman, you’re too late with regards to rat poison. One form of rat poison is already approved as a human drug. And, it saves lives every day. The drug is called warfarin or coumadin.
truthman30
HC..
Myself and Nathan have a mutual disrespect for each other which is going on a while, Nathan was first with the name calling , and it unfortunately it seems to be the only level of dialogue which he understands..
You seem to be of a similar ilk, and i think your pro-pharma brigade has been planted here for an agenda, your comments are in a similar vein to the attitude on cafe pharma… juvenile, distasteful and moronic..
Whenever serious issues are discussed your ilk reverts to this kind of tactic to deflect and divert attention away from the issues..
Your comment about me being deranged is a perfect example of the gap which exists between pharma and the consumer…
If you don’t respect the consumers of your drugs and the opinions they hold then how can an honest dialogue ever be achieved?
truthman30
Atlex
As a side note to this dialogue (speaking loosely… Truthman, you’re too late with regards to rat poison. One form of rat poison is already approved as a human drug. And, it saves lives every day. The drug is called warfarin or coumadin.
I used the “rat poison” scenario as a hypothetical and metaphorical example Atlex…
pg
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/330/7496/0-g
“Editor’s choice
Say no to the free lunch
Are you a pig or a weasel? Or do you consider yourself above all that? When the BMJ published a special issue on the links between doctors and drug companies in 2003, the cover showed pigs in white coats lunching and golfing with weasel drug reps. At the time this seemed strong stuff even to those involved in editing the issue. But little has happened since to suggest that the image was wrong. In fact, every day new revelations suggest that the reality is worse…”
pg
No Free Lunch Org
“I have been profoundly amazed and saddened when I have seen colleagues actually listening to what drug reps had to say. Seems to me rather like expecting a used car saleman to give you an honest balanced opinion. In both cases their job is to twist and misconstrue in any way possible to make a sale. The car salesman is not going to tell you about the worn out transmission, and the Vioxx rep isn’t going to tell you that your patient’s joint pain is about to be the least of their worries. Neither is smart business sense.”
Lisa Van S
Atlex,
Wow,. caught my attention. Coumadin is rat poison! Had no idea. My mother takes this drug along with Vytorin and Keppra.Im aware of the controversy of Vytorin, it was her physicians 3rd choice of drug,. and it appears to be working. Also I am aware of the suicide link to Keppra,.. and in my mother’s case benefit outweighs the risk. Im not against Pharma,… Im against drugging children for profit, and the withdrawal process is horrendous, children and adults alike.
Suzanne
Hi, I was given Paxil back in 2001 because I was stressing out at college (Stanford University, CS department) and having panic attacks. I informed the treating physician that there was a family history of bipolar disorder and depression on my dad’s side. Over the course of about 3 months my whole life changed - I stopped being able to attend classes or complete my work, I cheated on my boyfriend of 7 years and broke up, I dropped out of college and had two car accidents, and ended up homeless because nobody, including my mom, could handle me living at their house and they all thought I was on speed or something. The police officer who responded to my 2nd car accident, the one in which I totaled my car, noticed my enlarged pupils and asked what drugs I was on. When I responded “Paxil”, she gave a knowing nod and responded that this sort of accident was becoming more common because of these anti-depressants. Finally, the doctor who was treating me confirmed that I was actually bipolar and experiencing a manic episode, and that I needed to get off the Paxil with the aid of some other drug. After frenzied discussion behind the scenes and without my knowledge about whether to commit me or not, my parents, friends, and the doctor had me picked up by the sheriff and accompanied to a pharmacy to get the drug I would need for withdrawal (sorry I don’t remember the name; I have a month-long memory lapse from this period in my life). I have spent the last 7 years picking up the pieces of my life, maintaining a decent job, getting married, and now I’m going to have my first child. But I will never forget how Paxil came so close to ruining my life, and I will never take another pill without doing *extensive* research on the internet again! All the side-effects are listed, not on the box, but on the comments in blogs and the news stories you find collected at sites like ssristories.com about the various horrors people have suffered while under the influence of these russian-roulette “medications”. Right now I’m collecting evidence about Chantix to distribute to various people who are taking it or considering using it to quit smoking, because you sure as hell can’t trust the FDA, the drug manufacturer, or even your doctor to know jack shit or disclose it when they do. Yay unfettered capitalism!
Matthew Holford
Atlex wrote:
“…The drug is called warfarin or coumadin.”
Would that be the same warfarin that there was a price-fixing scandal about, a couple of years ago, in the UK?
Matt
HorusCat
truthman,
Your lack of insight into your own behavior is staggering. I have presented you with calm, reasoned discussion, and you react angrily and maliciously. YOU and seeme sound like you belong on CafePharma, where the level of conversation frequently drops to your apparent level of maturity.
This site is for discussion of both sides of the issue. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. You sound like a child. What are you going to say next, nanny nanny poo-poo?
pg,
Citing quotes from biased sources that happen to agree with your point of view doesn’t prove anything. I could quote source after source of physicians who are pro-pharma and appreciate what we have to offer. Why don’t you get a life?
Matthew Holford
Horus Cat wrote:
“Your lack of insight into your own behavior is staggering. I have presented you with calm, reasoned discussion, and you react angrily and maliciously…”
Horus Cat, I replied to one of your comments, accusing your adversaries of ignorance, in what I had hoped was a calm, reasoned manner, and yet you chose to ignore it. As such, I find your comments regarding lack of awareness of one’s own behaviour intriguing.
Matt
pg
Horus, one of the quotes is from the Editor of the British Medical Journal - not sure that you could call it a ‘biased’ source, in fact there has been some criticism of the amount of pharma advertising in the Journal recently. I could quote you a lot of physicians that ‘appreciate’ listening to drug reps. Therein lies much of the problem.
I expect those physicians are rather more careful in their choice of who they buy their cars from though.
Atlex
Lisa,
I wouldn’t be terribly concerned. Something like 40% of all seniors end up using coumadin at some point in their lives. It is a critically important medication that saves lives. However, monitoring patients on the medication is mandatory since the dosage range is relatively small and there is significant risk of bleeding at high doses.
By the way, as I understand it, in rats, the concept is to have them injest high doses and essentially bleed to death.
Matthew Holford
I’ve just read the OP, and a selection of the more recent comments, and I think we appear to have got away from the point, which is, as I see it, as follows:
1. Does Bob Fiddaman have a right to debate the issue in public? The correct answer is “yes,” as A&G and GSK acknowledge. No argument there, then.
2. Was the dialectic method of argument that Bob Fiddaman used acceptable, within the Law of England and Wales?
This is, then, a legal discussion as to what constitutes defamation and harassment, within English Law. It is also a discussion about whether pharmaceutical companies have a right to assert that patients who choose to speak out on these issues are breaking the Law, whilst at the same time refusing to speak with them and having their lawyers insist that the proper place to decide these issues is at Court. It may also be a discussion about whether GSK’s conduct amounts to intimidation, and “bargaining within the shadow of the Law”.
It is, then, a discussion about hypocrisy, at root.
Matt
truthman
“HorusCat
truthman,
Your lack of insight into your own behavior is staggering. I have presented you with calm, reasoned discussion, and you react angrily and maliciously. YOU and seeme sound like you belong on CafePharma, where the level of conversation frequently drops to your apparent level of maturity.
This site is for discussion of both sides of the issue. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. You sound like a child. What are you going to say next, nanny nanny poo-poo?”
hahaha..
You are so silly.. How can take anything you say seriously when you use a phrase like “nanny nanny poo-poo”?
I mean , seriously, come on.. are you completely demented or what?.. Actually, please don’t answer that, you might freak us all out completely..
You have presented nothing close to reasoned discussion , your rhetoric is steeped in petty jibes and nonsense ..
You have debated nothing, and if you work for the pharma industry all you are portraying is exactly how pharma slaves are percieved in the minds of the public ..
Arrogant, conceited and full of it..
I don’t know how you can possibly defend SSRI’s , the truth is out there now, the spin is failing, the wool has been ripped from the publics eyes and the game is up..
The quote you made earlier in this thread is a great insight into you HC ..
“I’m with you, bud, anyone who can fret over the small risk to an unborn baby posed by an SSRI while ignoring the thousands aborted every day has a need to re-examine her priorities…”
You haven’t got a clue really have you?…
pg
Truthman - I didn’t notice the ‘nanny nanny poo-poo’ bit in Horus’ comment but now you’ve brought it attention…yes, that is just an unbelievably ridiculous bit of speech.
HORUSCAT:
I don’t think ANYONE here is ‘anti drugs’ or ‘anti pharma’.
We have every right though to be ANTI FRAUDULENT SCIENCE, particularly when it harms people.
It seems you don’t like to hear people’s views whe ARE against scientific fraud. So I’m wondering - why AREN’T YOU against fraud?
pg
HC: WHY AREN’T YOU against industry trying to silence debate?
MONEY? Or FEAR?
Debate is what happens naturally in REAL science. Thats how it progresses. Why do you try so hard to dismiss the people who expose that silencing?
pg
“HorusCat
“truthman,
Your lack of insight into your own behavior is staggering. I have presented you with calm, reasoned discussion, and you react angrily and maliciously. YOU and seeme sound like you belong on CafePharma, where the level of conversation frequently drops to your apparent level of maturity.”
HIS level of maturity Horus?
What exactly is YOURS? It seems rather ‘low’ given the pharma rhetoric you have used to defend the silencing of debate and the defence of fraudulent science, something that thousands of other just like you have done over the years.
You said to me, “get a life”. I suggest you take your own advice and try to get one that takes some courage instead of taking the easy way by following the “deluded” crowd.
HorusCat
pg,
The only one attempting to silence anyone on this site is seeme…and since you didn’t read it correctly the first time, I will repeat myself: I was suggesting that seeme’s level of maturity is such that after saying, “Shut up,” and sounding like my 9 year old, he/she might like to follow up with, “nanny, nanny, poo-poo.”
I haven’t said anything about the alleged Paxil fraud. You may be right. I don’t really care, because 1) I have always thought Paxil is a piece of shit drug–it’s dirty, causes somnolence and weight gain, and it has a short half-life; and 2) there’s nothing I can do about it. I have more important things on which I wish to spend my outrage.
What I have said is three-fold: 1) You on this site claim to want debate, but what you really want are voices to echo your own, because when others get on the site, you gang up and attack them. 2) The SSRIs as a class are useful medicines which have helped many; the fact of 50 million users in 20 years is indisputable evidence that they are not, in fact, causing homicidal, suicidal maniacs to run amok on the planet. 3) Depression, like other mood disorders, has multiple causes and needs to be addressed with more than one modality, one of which may well have to be pharmaceutical in nature.
I don’t really think there’s much to debate in the previous paragraph.
Now let’s see how observant and how much self-control you have. Let’s see how many ad hominem attacks you resort to in responding to me.
HorusCat
Matt,
I did respond to you. Clinical studies have limitations which it would require much more time and space to go into than I have here. And you wouldn’t believe me, anyway, so why bother? Meta-analyses of trials have shown that overall, the SSRIs are effective. As I pointed out before, 20 years of successful use is a potent argument against the placebo effect. (As is the anecdotal experience of many who have unknowingly gotten generics and decompensated…) Nor have I advocated their use in mild depression. It is others who have seemingly assumed that I am arguing they ought to be in the water. You might want to notice, though, that your NHS has a vested interest in discouraging the use of pharmaceuticals, since they are financially interested in keeping costs as low as possible.
One thing I have pointed out time and again is that you and the rest shout “bias!” all the while ignoring the bias and self-interest of your own sources. Thus, it would seem to me to be best to leave the decision about the use of medication for the treatment of MDD to the patient and the physician, rather than having people like pg deny them that use.
HorusCat
“Fiddaman has regularly railed against the drugmaker over the pill and its various side effects,”
It doesn’t appear that Fiddaman has been silenced. It appears that GSK wanted him to refrain from one particular piece of speaking, a sound bite they saw as defamatory. He obviously has freely spoken his mind in the past and may continue to do so in the future. The question is whether he wants to continue to publish a piece of speech which may then be subject to debate in court as to whether or not it is defamatory. If he feels he has the force of truth behind him, why doesn’t he take it all the way to court? I don’t know how it works “under the laws of England and Wales,” but here in the States we say, “The truth is an absolute defense.” If Fiddaman’s right, he’ll win.
Former pharma Marketing Exec
Interesting read…
Clearly Pharma is angry, and they also seem to be loosing the intelligence battle!!
As Matthew says, let’s get back on topic.
Matthew, I am not sure of how much anyone can invoke any kind of law when the media is the internet.
If it is on Utube, then that is international. If it is on a web site that is registered in the UK then that is probably another story, but I really do not think that patients can be silenced like this.
This is interesting.
Robyn Clothier
I would be interested to hear from those in drug development whether they feel that science is given its proper place within their companies. What happens within your company if scientists think that marketing messages are not sufficiently scientifically accurate? And how free would you be to speak up if you discovered that the science itself was not done well enough?
GSK’s trial 329 of Paxil for depression in children & adolescents was a study where the report’s conclusions did not match the data, yet were used in marketing and were very influential within the medical community. (See http://www.healthyskepticism.org/documents/PaxilStudy329.php) What options would have been open to you if this happened in your company? Would you have felt obliged, as a scientist, to take some action, or would you ignore it if it was not in your direct area?
Gabby
I have worked for 10 years in a law firm on cases involving SSRI suicides and withdrawal symptoms. In that time, I have read thousands of pages on the subject including law briefs (plaintiff, defense and government), media articles, scientific publications, books, internal pharmaceutical company documents, expert witness reports, depositions, government reports and transcripts, financial reports, etc., etc., and I have been privy to information and communications which I cannot even define due to their sensitivity and/or confidentiality. I have reviewed or engaged in personal communications with many victims of SSRIs from upper class professionals to prisoners. I have also had an inside track on the extent of Big Pharma’s infiltration and co-opting of state and federal government functions on many levels. I was able also to view both the overt and disguised public relations and marketing methodologies that were involved in making SSRIs (and other drugs) staples of American consumption.
Over 6 years ago, the information I was consuming resolved into the following broad aspects which have since proven out:
1. Big Pharma had transformed from a basically scientific activity into a basically public relations activity.
Matthew Holford
Horus Cat wrote:
“…One thing I have pointed out time and again is that you and the rest shout “bias!” all the while ignoring the bias and self-interest of your own sources…”
Naturally, I am not familiar with the operation of clinical trials, assessment, and so on. But it isn’t for wont of trying, just a lack of willingness on the part of those with the knowledge to discuss these subjects.
Perhaps there is bias in our sources, and perhaps the sources that I cited have one eye on the declared objective: the interests of the patient. I don’t know: I’m not them, which is why I tend to scrutinize the utterances of the Worshipful Company for inconsistencies. That is, if it can contradict itself, when making public statements, then there may well be something peculiar going on. Perhaps the NHS is biased, and perhaps NICE is biased on behalf of the NHS. Perhaps the Health Select Committee is biased. Perhaps Moncrieff, Kirsch, Glenmullen, Aursnes, Healy, Breggin, etc, etc, are all biased. I don’t know: I’m not them.
What I do know is that the MHRA is unable or unwilling to discuss the way it assesses drugs, and gets so flustered that it would rather use a legislative get-out clause to avoid answering than pursue an issue to a consumer’s (my), satisfaction. I also know that SKB’s view of its own drug was not optimistic. I know that it pressed ahead with a licence application, anyway. And now, despite the misgivings it had 10 years ago, with respect to the treatment of minors, it is arguing that it took a further five years before a meta analysis (presumably following a failed application for a licence for kids), revealed that there was a problem, and it was a further three years before the information was made available to the public. I think I have the correct chronology, anyway, although I don’t think it really matters what order one puts those events in. It then has the bare-faced cheek, despite knowingly withholding data (according to the UK regulator), to say that it looks forward to working with policy makers and legislators during the consultation stage of any new legislation being considered. I’ll just bet it does.
But this, all this, is irrelevant. What we have, in the final analysis, is a bunch of patients who believe that they have experienced side effects that were known to be an issue with a given drug. They have reported these as side effects and, as in my case, they may have been told that this had nothing to do with the drug, but was all down to them, and their condition (please don’t take me up on this point - nobody in officialdom has acknowledged that it could have been the drug that caused my suicidality, so I won’t fucking well acknowledge the possibility that it was down to me). Then, when they seek to understand what has led to a situation where they are required to bear all responsibility for the stuff that goes wrong, they are stonewalled. They are not permitted to understand how drugs are trialled, licensed or marketed.
So, instead, those who are motivated, presumably including those posting here, choose to trawl the net for information. It may be found in drips and drabs. Some scientific. Some legal. None of it appears to point in the direction that the Worshipful Company would have us believe. We find that there is seemingly (widespread) statistical jiggery pokery in the production of statistical analyses. These analyses are passed to regulators, in support of licence applications. The regulators appear to accept these as valid representations of the original data. We find that negative trials results are routinely withheld. We find that SAE data is suppressed (and that this is not a criminal offence, astonishingly). We find that KOLs, in conjunction with ghostwriters, are a marketing tool, but are held up to be reliable representations of the truth. We find unlawful marketing of off label indications. We find the creation of (mental) illnesses, presumably to create additional markets for drugs. We find silence, and denial.
Tell me, Horus Cat, what should we think?
Matt
PS As to Bob: any piece of speech may be alleged to be defamatory, and become the subject of legal debate in a court of Law. It is the case that powerful parties have used this fact, in the past, to silence critics (see, for example, McLibel). GSK knows that Bob may not pursue it, every time he perceives that there is an issue, and GSK refuses to discuss it with him, such that he has to go to court to get answers. GSK, however, is positioned financially, such that it may do precisely that, when it wishes to silence people. Please note that this conduct is acknowledged to undermine the right of alleged defamers to a fair trial, under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, because within the english system, there is no legal aid in defamation cases, and so if one cannot afford it, one is required to defend oneself, or be silenced (this is often referred to as “the chilling effect of the libel laws, because the burden of proof is on the defendant, not the plaintiff). Not forgetting, of course, that that video is on many sites, now, and yet I have heard nothing of GSK pursuing others, over alleged copyright infringement. Nor, with respect to the UK-based bloggers, has it chosen to pursue them over defamation (in English Law, it is not only the initial untruth that is defamatory, as is the case in the US).
In any event, Article 10 extends the public interest privilege to the general public - I see nothing in that video that is any more outrageous than the London Greenpeace pamphlet, in McLibel. Not forgetting, of course, that Steel and Morris were able to demonstrate two thirds of what they claimed, at court. It was a PR disaster.
Matt
Matthew Holford
Former pharma Marketing Exec wrote:
“…Matthew, I am not sure of how much anyone can invoke any kind of law when the media is the internet…”
I think you’re right. In fact, we made sure of it, by encouraging people to blog about the story, and to post the video, if they felt comfortable with it. If GSK wants to play that game, whereby it says “if you want information, sue us,” then we can play it, too. Its silence has undone it. In the final analysis, Bob Fiddaman presented an intellectual, academic argument, in video slideshow form. That’s legitimate debate, as far as I’m concerned, and GSK can fuck off.
Matt
Matthew Holford
Incidentally, if you’re interested in reading the judgment (in Steel and Morris), then it’s here:
http://www.echr.coe.int/eng/Press/2005/Feb/ChamberjudgmentSteel&MorrisvUnitedKingdom150205.htm
It’s quite brief, and informative.
Matt
pg
Horus: “Thus, it would seem to me to be best to leave the decision about the use of medication for the treatment of MDD to the patient and the physician, rather than having people like pg deny them that use.”
I said:
“I don’t think ANYONE here is ‘anti drugs’ or ‘anti pharma’.
We have every right though to be ANTI FRAUDULENT SCIENCE, particularly when it harms people.”
Matthew H has in the last few comments given an excellent summary of the situation and Gabby’s conclusion about the industry sounds about right to me.
truthman30
The way i see it is..
Even if Nathan And Horuscat are totally ethical and moral in their pharmaceutical activities… is being associated with a pharmaceautical company which commits crimes , defrauds and kills patients not enough to be complicit in them? ..
And surely continuing to work for a company while being aware of its criminal activities is the same as ignoring the lie thus becoming part of the lie? ..
truthman30
As a side, but relevant note..
The “controversial” video has been viewed 750 times since all of this fuss kicked off not long ago..
It seems the domain of the internet has become a powerful means of expressing consumer advocacy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odAcIY6I_do
Matthew Holford
Truthman wrote:
“…And surely continuing to work for a company while being aware of its criminal activities is the same as ignoring the lie thus becoming part of the lie? ..”
Maybe. Although the people lower down the foodchain are not the ones setting the policy. We know what happens to whistleblowers: it happened to me, and it happened to Aubrey (not to mention John Buse and Gurkirpal Singh). People know what it likely to happen to them, if they speak out: everybody else gets their head down, and lets the whistleblower receive the usual intimidation, ostracization, dismissal, etc, on his/her own. Others may even feel be co-opted into the intimidation, in order to demonstrate that they are “on-message”. That’s a powerful lot of fear.
No, let the responsibility lie where it should: with the top dog. It’s Garnier that I want.
Matt
truthman30
Oh…
And i’ve counted about 20 websites and blogs which are discussing and linking to the video ..
There are probably more but the great show of solidarity by consumers, activists, patients and ethical mental health folks for Bob Fiddaman and the “patient voice” has been nothing short of inspiring…
http://seroxatsecrets.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/gsk-lawyers-target-seroxat-campaigner-bob-fiddaman-what-next/
HorusCat
Matthew,
I’ll take your word for it on all that is going on in Britain with Bob…I don’t claim to begin to understand the nuances of the law in the UK. Still, it appears that he makes his point…have they attempted to silence him in the past in this fashion?
I told pg I’m not up on the whole Paxil/Seroxat issue. Is Seroxat approved for kids in the UK? It is not here in the States, of course.
There is nothing mystical about clinical trials; it is just that they have inherent limitations, at least here in the states, due to the way the FDA requires them to be set up. The FDA controls how they are done and what endpoints they can use, as well as requiring placebo-control vs. active control, etc. There is automatically bias in trials, no matter who sets them up, if only because the patients are followed closely and have a lot of motivation (after all, they enrolled in a trial). All sorts of comorbidities are excluded, so the patients aren’t truly “real world.” The exclusions are necessary in order to keep the data as clean as possible, but it does mean that a trial doesn’t translate to the real world as well as one might think. One obvious example is the requirement that women of child-bearing age prove that they are using reliable birth control. This means that young women (young compared to me, for instance) may not enroll as heavily as older women and men. That’s just one example.
The upshot is that while trials point to the efficacy of a drug, they only give a general idea. It is out in the real world that a true picture emerges. I could give an example of this with one of the meds I detail, but I don’t want to give away which company I work for. Let’s just say that the real world experience was 180 degress opposite what the trials suggested, and it took two years of real world experience to figure out why there was this difference. Furthermore, of course, there are side effects that emerge only after literally hundreds of thousands of patients have taken a drug. That is why information may not be included in the original PI, and the PI is updated as the FDA sees fit. I don’t know how that works in the UK.
All of this about clinical trials just to say that I think the real life experience of tens of millions of people on SSRIs points to their utility, at least in MDD. I am not going to argue about their relative inefficacy in mild/moderate depression. That is another artifact of trials–it is much easier to show treatment effect in the severe patient than the mild patient, no matter what the disease state. I think there is much to say for treating mild/moderate depression differently than MDD, but a lot of people don’t want to do the psychic work involved in that…they’d much rather take a pill and feel better. (Just like they want that magic pill to help them lose weight, rather than eating less and exercising.)
This whole Paxil thing is beyond me. I suspect that much of the venom directed at me on this site is because people have very strong feelings about Paxil and perceive that I am defending GSK. I in no way am defending GSK (Smith, Kline, Beecham, I guess to you). I used to sell against Paxil and never understood why a doctor would write that drug. My sister-in-law had a poor experience with it, similar to that of the college student above. Most doctors agree that SSRIs should not be used when there is a possibility of bipolar disease, which is what I think occurred with my sister-in-law.
Like I said, I will take your word about what is going on in the UK with Seroxat. I’m not going to do the work to investigate all that simply because we all have to pick where we expend our energy, and for me, Seroxat is not that issue.
I do have to say one thing about “evidence” you find on the internet. One does have to remember that everyone has an angle. That doesn’t invalidate what they say, necessarily, but it does mean you have to weigh the evidence with that in mind. Furthermore, marketing documents taken out of context may seem more damning than they are. Some of pg’s examples of Paxil marketing documents don’t strike me as particularly egregious, in that we are in sales, so the language we use to talk about what we do is commercial language. Now, again, as to whether they knew at the time they were spinning the withdrawal side effect that it was as bad as it is, I don’t know. If so, then that is fraudulent, and I have said repeatedly, should be punished.
HorusCat
truthman,
I don’t work for GSK and never have. The company I work for is not white as the drifted snow, I’m sure, but no large corporation is. I am content , with the state of things at my company, at least as far as they treat consumers; maybe not so much with how they are treating employees, but that’s another story. I sold an SSRI when I worked for another company, and happen to disagree with you about their safety and efficacy, so I’m not going to argue with you about whether I should have moral qualms about working for that company.
Matthew Holford
HorusCat wrote:
“I’ll take your word for it on all that is going on in Britain with Bob…”
I haven’t known Bob well enough to answer your question definitively. Not as far as I know. GSK appears to be relying upon the comment he made (comparing Benbow to Hitler), which Bob has apologized for, and is awaiting an acknowledgement of said apology. However, in the letter it wrote to his lawyers, it complained of the content of the video as being defamatory, when it’s not.
To answer your other question, the drug is not indicated for the treatment of minors, in the UK, although it is prescribed off-label, of course. That does not alter the fact that GSK withheld data, though. Indeed, we do not even know for how long it withheld data - and unless GSK agrees to the release of the MHRA investigation documentation, we never will know.
Trials are peculiar things, I agree: they rely on anecdotal patient evidence, or patient feedback. This is then formalized, and becomes scientific when represented as a string of numbers on a spreadsheet. However, anecdotal patient reporting is not given any weight, outside of this (ie, when there is no control over the data forthcoming, if I were being cynical). The upshot is that when a 30 year-old patient on SSRIs complains of suicidality, (s)he is told that it is impossible for this to be attributable to use of the drug. This is the official position, from company to Government, via regulator - and seems to extend to clinicians, too. Nobody departs from this, as far as I know. However, we understand that GSK’s own Healthy Volunteer Trials gave rise to suicidality in certain of the trialists. What should we make of that incongruence? Also, how should we reconcile these incongruences? We are not permitted to do so, is the answer. That raises a flag, with me. My suspicion is that those responsible have been caught out in a lie so flagrant that the only solution is silence. Official silence, which is attributed to the commercial confidential nature of the material. I regret to say that I see no other explanation for it.
Anyway, the evidence that I rely on is in large part, if not exclusively, from official sources - I don’t use anything else, because I know it will be dismissed as hearsay, or speculation. Countermanding clinical opinion is as far as I’m willing to go in terms of authority, but then the inconsistencies in the Worshipful Company’s story are so glaring, one hardly needs a smoking gun.
There are loopholes throughout the system, which have been exploited, at one time, or another. Nothing is being done to close any of them. That raises a flag with me.
Matt
PS I refer to “SKB” when it was SmithKline Beecham (ie, in 1998, when the infamous memo was drafted, the Company had yet to merge with Glaxo Wellcome).
HorusCat
Matt,
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far, away…I did research (on rats) with a Smith, Kline, French drug…that’s how old I am.
What you describe in Britain does not go on here–as far as I see. None of the physicians upon whom I call would deny that the SSRIs, especially in early days, can cause anxiety and agitation–which needs to be watched closely. One cannot prescribe these drugs and tell the patient, see you in 6 months. The protocol is to see the patient back in a week, then 3 weeks, then “frequently” from there. Furthermore, one must warn the patient of the potential for suicidality and give them clear instructions about what to do if they begin to experience agitation and suicidal thoughts. Is this not the case in the UK?
Whether one is treating a depressed (I mean MDD) patient with medication or not (say one is doing psychotherapy or CBT), I would think that frequent contact in the early days is crucial, as well as making sure the patient knows what to do if he/she begins to experience suicidal thoughts. All physicians, and I’m sure counselors, are required to ask if the patient is considering suicide, if she/he has a plan, etc. It then varies from state to state as to the options a physician has if a patient admits to having a plan.
I cannot imagine that physicians in the UK are any different from physicians here. The psychiatrists I work with take suicidality very seriously, including the potential of it with SSRIs (and tricyclics). Perhaps becauase our malpractice laws are different from yours. This is one place I disagree with truthman very strenuously. I think the majority of physicians with whom I deal are ethical, caring and intelligent humans.
Family practice and internal medicine physicians are another story. Not that they are not ethical and caring, but that they are not reimbursed in such a way as to make spending time with a depressed patient worthwhile for them. I would even argue that they don’t spend enough time with drug reps to be reminded that they need to follow depressed patients very closely, etc. But I can’t say for sure, because it has been a decade since I called on primary care, and the scene has changed enormously since I did so.
HorusCat
Matt,
Another follow-up on what you said in response to truthman’s complaint that I even continue to work for pharma….we know almost nothing about what is going on in the scientific side of the company. This is by design, as the FDA closely regulates what sales can say. What I can say that is as soon as the issue of suicidality became public (and therefore, WE knew about it), we were given clear instructions how to warn our physicians. We were not told to obfuscate or deny. Zoloft DID have a child indication (OCD), so we were talking to our child psychs about the potential even with that indication.
What pg and truthman and others vociferously claim is that we were pushing the SSRIs for depression in children and that our persuasiveness is what made them prescribe the SSRIs for children. This is so far from my experience that it makes me laugh. When the suicide warning came out with children, I grilled my child psychs closely, because my son was on Zoloft at the time (not for depression). They had their own perceptions of the data, and it did not come from drug company spin–at least not my company’s.
I have no ethical problems with how my former company handled the data.
Bob Freeman
To show how old I am, one of the first research projects I started dealth with how family physicians manage patients with mental disorder. (Disclaimer: I don’t know how they management them now given the “new” drug options they have available). In the olden days, they were quick to refer to clinical psychologists or psychiatrists because they weren’t comfortable in managing these patients. I suspect a high rate of referrals reamin although this is just speculation on my part.
Bob Freeman
HC, another project from the 70s dealt with the use of a prescription to signal the patient that the visit was over. Again, I haven’t kept up with this but I suspect the practice is still around.
truthman30
” I think the real life experience of tens of millions of people on SSRIs points to their utility” says HC
Using this tired pharma tag line means nothing when you apply it to the real world HC ..
Cigarettes have been smoked by billions for decades and they are still sold..
Does that mean they are “healthy” and “good for you”? ..
There are millions dependent and addicted to these drugs so if that’s your sales pitch and efficacy argument, its a crap one..
gh admitting you sold these drugs and have no qualms about promoting them indicates to me that possibly you do not possess a conscience ..
You even go as far as to mention your son was on Zoloft..
That to me speaks volumes …
HorusCat
Bob,
I think the Rx to end time with a physician is taught in med school.
Primary care does refer quickly to psychiatry; one problem is a relative dearth of psychiatrists. I know Pfizer made a brief foray into primary care with their antipsychotic; I think this was a bad idea, and I think they have terminated that practice, but I don’t know for sure.
Out in more rural areas, a primary care doc may indeed do more “psychiatry,” due to there being no place nearby to refer patients. Probably, these physicians also know their patients better and spend more time with them; that is the nature of a more rural practice.
truthman, I’m done arguing with you. You see it one way and I see it differently. No place to go from there, and your ad hominem attacks are tiresome.
AA
Truthman,
To add to your excellent comments, insulin coma therapy was accepted as standard practice in the psych world for years. I don’t think anyone today is extolling its virtues.
HC, you keep talking about the efficiency of these drugs. On the National Institute of Mental Health Website, it says that ADs work 50% of the time and reduce 50% of the symptoms. The success rate is even less if you are going for full remission.
The Star D study showed that ADs work 33% of the time. Top experts were quoted as saying that was very disappointing.
These aren’t quotes by Scientologists or people with an anti psychiatry agenda.
AA
HorusCat
AA,
If you read my posts, you find that what I say about the efficacy of these drugs can be summarized as follows, and these are the words of one of my physicians (who has been in practice for 45 years):
Psychotropic meds follow the rule of threes: they work well in 1/3 of patient; help some in 1/3 of patient; and fail in 1/3 of patients.
If you read my posts, you find that I encourage use of SSRIs as part of a comprehensive paradigm for treatment–a paradigm that should include therapy, group work, journaling, nutrition, exercise, spiritual guidance if the patient is inclined that way, etc., etc.
I have said that I think the process of overcoming MDD or any other mood disorder is very, very difficult and requires a lot of work and energy. I think our lifestyle contributes to the incidence of depression in our society. I wonder what you would find to argue about with these statements?
Matthew Holford
HorusCat wrote:
“…What you describe in Britain does not go on here–as far as I see…”
Well, my GP told me that suicidality was an issue with these drugs (fluoxetine, specifically), but when I experienced the side effect, he told me that it was my issue - as far as I’m concerned, he lied to me. As to what the guidelines are, I only know what NICE recommends, which is not binding on doctors. Actually, I don’t know what NICE recommends - I’ve read the document (CG43?), several times, and still can’t remember what it has to say, aside from the fact that drugs should only be prescribed as a first thrust for the severely depressed. Seeing as how my doctor made no attempt to assess the severity of my depression, I cannot see how anyone can know how depressed I may have been, at the time. I certainly wasn’t watched closely, and the provision of counselling services is/was so deficient that none was available. I paid for my own, but it appears that I picked a nutter!
You know, it seems to me that everybody could argue that they did all that was required of them - I’ll bet that they’ve ticked all the right boxes. Just like GSK, in fact - in accordance with the letter of the Law, but so far out of kilter with the spirit that it beggars belief. In other words, despite the grand claims, the objective is not achieved, nor is it even close to being achieved. However, I appear to have ticked all the right boxes myself, and I appear also to have fallen through every single crack in the system. The system, then, is flawed, and until that gets acknowledged, and remedied, I’m going to continue to ask awkward questions of the People With No Answers.
I don’t know about off label marketing of Paxil/Seroxat. There’s a series of cases pending in the US courts over unlawful marketing of antipsychotics, just now, so it’s certainly not unheard of in the industry. I don’t see that GSK should be given a clean bill of health, solely on this one point, though - there’s too much else that’s wrong.
Matt
pg
Off label marketing. I don’t know if works quite the same way in the UK as it is described as working in the US by this April 3rd 2008 New England Journal of Medicine’s publication, but seroquel and paxil get a mention:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/358/14/1427
“…Although off-label prescribing — the prescription of a medication in a manner different from that approved by the FDA — is legal and common, it is often done in the absence of adequate supporting data…
…Off-label use arises through many pathways but usually entails the use of drugs for unapproved clinical indications (e.g., the antipsychotic agent quetiapine [Seroquel] prescribed for depression) or in unapproved subpopulations (e.g., paroxetine [Paxil] for depression in children)…”
pg
Bullying/threats by GSK. Seems that in the US, Professor John Buse also got threatened by them for reporting cardiac side effects in Avandia.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/drug_thugs.html
and here:
http://www.wddty.com/03363800369657346338/drug-secrecy-gsk-threatened-career-of-whistle-blower.html
That was in 1999, and though he was right and GSK were not, it still took until 2007 to get a black box warning.
pg
Dr Rosemary Johann-Liang also got ‘demoted’ from her job at the FDA in 2006 for doing the right thing by approving a recommendation from a safety reviewer at the agency for a black box warning. Apparently her ‘demotion’ came about because some FDA officials (who just happened to have a closer relationship with GSK) complained.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/06/business/avandia.php
I expect there’s a link in pharmalot as well, but this was the one that came up first.
truthman30
http://www.network54.com/Forum/281849/
More coverage here ..
HorusCat
Matt,
I can’t imagine a physician telling a patient that feeling suicidal is “his” issue. I’m not doubting you–that was a rhetorical device to express astonishment. Here in the States, if a physician said that and the patient went on to commit suicide, that physician would be sued in a heartbeat. As I noted above, there are protocols to follow; and as you noted, they probably aren’t at all times. Perhaps a GP is not aware of them; or perhaps you got a particularly bad GP. I am sorry that you went through that.
pg
In 2007 GSK were still facing possible criminal prosecution.
In 2007 this BBC video was made.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6310000/newsid_6317000/6317031.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&bbcws=1
Worth watching.
pg
Is that true HC that physicians get sued in a heartbeat in the US?
I can’t understand that, as there are vastly more people from the US complaining that their physician hasn’t helped in suicidality or other side effects from psych drugs than there are in the UK (probably because US take the greatest number of psych drugs globally) and yet it is SO hard to find a case where a patient has, in the US, successfully sued a doctor when doctors put suicidality down to the patient’s mental disorder in psych drug case.
Perhaps I’m not using the right keywords in search. I can find bits and pieces like this February 2008 article
that says “now” which clearly means very recently:
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2008/02/04/a_doctors_dilemma_prescribing_pain_pills_is_getting_trickier/
“The ruling means that providers may now face legal jeopardy for unintended consequences of prescribed medications”.
Its extremely easy to find thousands of signees on petitions and very many people on support boards all over the place where they’re asking for help BECAUSE their physican has been ‘taught’ that these drugs are so safe and so don’t listen.
It really would help me, and probably others here, to understand how what you say works if you could provide links to those cases showing how physicians get sued when they put psychological side effects of drugs down to the patient.
It seems that in the US, they can’t even win in Court against the drug companies without it being compensation offered, with the drug company not admitting liability.
truthman30
As I noted above, there are protocols to follow; and as you noted, they probably aren’t at all times. Perhaps a GP is not aware of them;
Its all very well having guidelines and protocols HC..
But we all know that GP’s and psychiatrists have prescribed SSRI’s most irresponsibly..
Pharma reps have to take some accountability for this too…
After all, they are the ones who push the pills on the physicians..
The problem with the SSRI scenario is there is a chain of supply , and the patient is left damaged but not knowing who to blame..
The Doctors blame the reps , the reps blame their employers (pharma) , and pharma denies responsibility and in the beginning actually blamed the patient!
Its a case of pass the SSRI time bomb parcel..
Jane
This is a 21 minute slide show sent to psychiatrist after Eli Lilly settled 18,000 claims regarding Zyprexa. The slide show advises Psychiatrist how to avoid a lawsuit. It is pretty interesting as it talks about how in psychiatry is it basically impossible to win a lawsuit against a doctor. Something like 1% of psychiatrists’ are sued and of the 1% basically none are won.
http://www.pvupdate.com/prgs/plr11/index.htm
pg
TM30 - I’ve kind of have feeling that the post not far up up is the newish pharma line, ie: after having mislead the average physician by obscuring data from regulators (and so also of course physicians and patients), they’re crying ‘We don’t like these class actions we work for the Shareholders - so DON’T BLAME US DRUG MAKERS FOR THAT FRAUD, BLAME YOUR DOCTOR’.
Besides, I have a vague but fairly recent memory of drug company/ies - I think it was Lilly, but not sure, sending out a protection letter in case patients sued their doctors. Might have been re Zyprexa??
pg
There we go, suspect Jane’s video is what I was thinking of. Not sure because I haven’t watched it yet and I’m just going on what Jane’s comment says.
pg
Thank you Jane. It is related. Just got to the part “for psychiatrist, its even better…”
I’ve seen somewhere a letter/mail to physicians, fairly sure it was from Lilly re Zyprexa, explaining how the drug company will indemnify them from being sued by patients. Will try to find it tomorrow.
Matthew Holford
HorusCat wrote:
“…I am sorry that you went through that.”
I appreciate that. Truly. Regrettably, none of those concerned feel inclined to express their regret. No matter.
Matt
Jane
I believe we are talking about the same thing pg. Basically Lilly was saying “keep prescribing our drug. You won’t be sued”.
AA
Horus Cat,
In reading your posts, you act like these drugs have a wonderful tract record in efficiency. When we argue that they don’t, you infer that we are basing it on antipsychiatry sites or that we’re just a vocal minority to be dismissed. That is why I quoted those statistics.
Actually, those psychiatrists are inferring a success rate of 66% when actually the most optimistic statistics I have seen is on the NIH site. Some experts from the Star D study were even quoting a 7% success rate although I admit they were in the minority.
AA
Matthew Holford
pg wrote:
“…so DON’T BLAME US DRUG MAKERS FOR THAT FRAUD, BLAME YOUR DOCTOR’…”
In financial compliance, we have a maxim: “one may delegate authority, but not responsibility.” In practical terms, this means that the CEO is where the buck stops - if an underling fucks up, then it’s the CEO’s error for appointing the wrong person in that role, for example (I don’t say that the financial services industry doesn’t have its fair share of issues, mind you). There is also an Ombudsman, to whom one complains.
There are no such equivalent provisions in the pharmaceutical world, as far as I can establish. It certainly would focus the CEO’s mind on corporate governance, if (s)he were to get slated, every time something went wrong - nobody would want the job, would they?
Matt
pg
I think you’re more or less spot on there Matthew!
pg
Jane, yes. I’ll try to find the written thing tomorrow. Its not GSK and thats what THIS page is about, but its all the same. How Drug Makers influence doctors, psychiatrists, and are willing also to pay money to those doctors if they keep prescribing AND it’s worth it in $$$$s to keep the drug on the market - and perhaps its also cheaper than class actions against them.
pg
And how they (GSK and some other drug companies) use threats to patients - as in Bob Fiddaman - and to academics to shut people up.
These are the people who make ‘medicine’. Thats how they behave.
Matthew Holford
pg wrote:
“…Professor John Buse also got threatened by them for reporting cardiac side effects in Avandia…”
LOL. You should read the Senate Finance Committee’s report on the intimidation of John Buse:
http://www.senate.gov/~finance/press/Gpress/2007/prg111507b.pdf
Garnier, Stout and Yamada take right pasting! It’s hilarious - whomever wrote it was thoroughly pissed off with GSK, I’ll tell you that, for nothing! My favourite bit is where, in a delightful piece of understatement, the author describes GSK’s conduct as “less than stellar”!
Matt
pg
Medicines by an industry who behave like a Drug Cartel Mob.
And their MONEY gets them off lightly for anything they do. Unbelievable.
pg
I’ll read it now Matthew :-)
truthman30
pg
Medicines by an industry who behave like a Drug Cartel Mob.
And their MONEY gets them off lightly for anything they do. Unbelievable.
I couldn’t agree more PG ..
The high powered executives who call the shots in Big Pharma operate above the law because their profit margins are so big!
Just because the criminals get away with it doesn’t make them less guilty..
pg
Matthew and TM30 - answered you both in one comment and was just about to post when Internet Explorer got that ‘error’ message where you can’t do anything but close down (and report error).
Too tired to answer it all again. :-(
Nite.
pg
EXCEPT matthew, good link and something from your link was horrific like over 80,000 heart attacks from not listening to the whistleblower
and TM30, agreeing with you and that it was WORSE because they don’t have the excuse (if they did it would result in a prison sentence in our ‘real’ world) of poverty or fear - they’re wealthy, educated, privileged, well fed, etc, and yet they’re happy to make their money from people they know they might kill by promoting and selling their drugs by hiding the adverse effects. So in the pharmaceutical world, the world of money justice does NOT recognise the killing of people as a crime.
Something like that.
truthman30
“So in the pharmaceutical world, the world of money justice does NOT recognise the killing of people as a crime.
Something like that”
Absolutely pg ..
Suppression of side effects and silencing of critics/whistle blowers( David Healy-Buse-Avandia-Paxil) is a business decision ..
Deaths from defective drugs are not considered as an anything but “statistics” ..
Matthew Holford
pg wrote:
“…good link and something from your link was horrific like over 80,000 heart attacks from not listening to the whistleblower…”
Yes, that report’s lacerating, isn’t it? And yet, I don’t remember anything in the mainstream media about this. It seems these people may, as has already been suggested, jeopardize life, and avoid all sanctions. Not so much as an official censure.
Matt
pg
HorusCat, don’t get put off by the flurry of comments that seemed to start when you posted.
Really looking forward to the evidence that in the US, its different and physicians help their patients or survivors when psych drugs cause suicidality.
Especially since lots of us outside of the US realise that the US have spread drugging of adults and children long before anywhere else did. We also see that the whole psych drug control - hiding of data, manipulation of data, a ‘justice’ system that protects info and data that could have saved lives, the regulatory system that has protected drug corruption generally…has been hidden by corruption and the justice system for decades.
We observed all that a long time before it arrived in other countries, but now its spreading to us elsewhere. A sick justice system, a sick regulatory system etc. The world’s drugs info that relies on the US JUSTICE SYSTEM ‘protecting’ date ‘legally’ from other nations as well as the US.
The bright side is, we all(Europeans) have watched it happening in the United States for a couple of decades, but never believing the pharma industry or govs would ever try to pull that stint on us eventually. Some of us watched with concern, sometimes with humour, for instance: not believing a nation would put their pets on drugs. Generally it was just so…unbelievable. Then it started to creep our way.
A few are convinced, but the observers are not. So it will be a relief to see your evidence, HorusCat.
pg
ie, there is NO evidence. Drugging the population has been for decades a US thing. You won’t get away with it here.
HorusCat
AA,
The psychiatrist I quoted was going on his own experience, not the studies. And that isn’t a 66% success rate in terms of remission…it is in terms of patient improvement. I am saying that real world experience with the SSRIs is, on balance, positive; that is why doctors keep using the medications. You can’t hang their use on the drug companies anymore–with the exception of Lexapro, they’ve all gone off-patent. You quote studies back at me that say, “Well, HC, see you’re wrong because the studies say so.” I say that studies are limited, and doctors go by their real world experience. That is the loggerheads to which we have come: you ysay studies, I say real world experience.
And yes, you are a minority. I understand why you feel like you aren’t–the same reason I feel like everyone in the world must know everything about politics, because I keep up on it and everyone in that world DOES know about politics. But the average Joe doesn’t know squat about poltiics. And the average SSRI user doesn’t have any complaints. So you are a minority, when you consider that upwards of 50 million people have used these drugs.
That doesn’t mean your complaints are inconsequential–if I have implied that, I apologize. It does mean that the overall experience with the medication needs to be considered when making decisions about their availability. You seem to want your experience to be defining–I simply say that your experience is not the typical experience with an SSRI (Paxil perhaps excluded; I have said before it is a sucky drug, and yet I know a lot of people who love it).
You all have issues with the business aspect of pharmaceuticals. That is the world we live in. It is a regulated free market. If you want changes in the research, development, prescribing and marketing of drugs, you need to work within the private industry framework. For instance, to me, that means perhaps increasing clinical research time in order better to discern side effects, BUT then balancing that increased time to market with a patent life that starts only with the commercial marketing of the drug. Companies “spin” data or at worst commit fraud because they have massive investments in their products and stockholders to please. Take the incentive away to cheat by making it easier to troubleshoot for problems and still recoup an investment. As long as you have downward pressure on prices from formulary restrictions and government price demands and regulatory pressure which decreases effective time on the market, you are incentivizing companies to do all they can to be obscurantist rather than transparent.
I am not excusing fraud. I am saying that rather than flailing away in an adversarial manner, come up with win-win solutions. You want better safety data and more transparent clinical testing and after-market reporting. Companies want to be able to recoup their investment and make a profit–which BTW they are legally bound to do. It CAN be win-win. You have been relatively civil to me, as has Matt. You have won someone in your corner by being civil to me. I don’t have much power in my company, but I can control what I say about my medications and I can watch what goes on around me. I have, in the past, called others on what I would call pushing the envelope and would not hesitate to do so in the future. I am not going anywhere in my company because I can’t relocate to headquarters, but there are others who will work their way up the chain. You do far more by persuading them to see your perspective rather than, like pg, asking them how they can sleep at night and being similarly malicious.
pg
SO GSK, don’t threaten our people. OK?
pg
The US drug dependent syndrome. Horus, we will NOT stand for the rhetoric here. OK?
DOH: “You do far more by persuading them to see your perspective rather than, like pg, asking them how they can sleep at night and being similarly malicious.”
Horus, stop pushing the pharma line and the pharma tactics. We’re not from the US, we haven’t been influenced by the drug companies for decades, and we will NOT fall for those tactics.
HorusCat
pg,
You’re a bitch and I’m not conversing with you anymore. You don’t talk, you slander and abuse, and frankly, I’m too old for it.
Matt,
I’d be very interested in hearing more about your story, should you ever care to share it with me.
HC
pg
Hey, wheres the evidence about how US people sue their doctors and its nothing like the UK HorusCat?
WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE?
We’re not fools.
pg
Nite from the ‘bitch’. You don’t have any evidence. For anything. Do you.
pg
TOO OLD to present evidence? Or too corrupt? You simply don’t have any evidence. Matt isn’t stupid either by the way.
Laurie
” You want better safety data and more transparent clinical testing and after-market reporting.”
This is exactly what I want, and what I fight for. But in that fight for full disclosure we hit roadblocks from Pharma and the medical profession every step of the way. I have to wonder why they are so threatened by the full disclosure, post marketing analysis and informed consent? We don’t see this in non psychiatric drugs. Can you imagine prescribing Coumadin and the doctor not giving all the information on the risks of the drug? It doesn’t happen.
As I said when I testifed at the FDA, “Just because someone is depressed, doesn’t make them stupid”, and “It is never ethical to withhold medical information for the sake of compliance”.
I think this is the key argument with this category of drugs. There are those who had horrible reactions prior to the warnings, and even with the warnings as they stand today, patients are still not being informed. And worse…their bad reactions, even though well documented in medical literature, are denied and misdiagnosed.
pg
HorusCat, I tell the truth. Why don’t you try that?
pg
Horus, you keep calling us the “minority”. OPEN YOUR EYES.
pg
Horus said “I am saying that rather than flailing away in an adversarial manner, come up with win-win solutions. You want better safety data and more transparent clinical testing and after-market reporting.”
But you don’t LIKE it when we discuss fraud in science. You call us a minority. You tell us how effective SSRIs are, even though there is lots of evidence that the data was misrepresented.
Horus, you can’t try to dismiss evidence of fraud by doing that and at the same time use give different messages and pretend to be FOR us. Your tactics are TRANSPARENTLY deceptive on your part.
You are on this paxil page about GSK bullies a UK Patient, to try (as you have rather well) to veer the situation elsewhere. You even said further up the board something about not knowing or caring much about the paxil situation.
SO WHY are you posting this pharma stuff on a page that you’re not even interested in?
I know why.
HorusCat
pg,
You harangue, you abuse, you debase, you attack. You’re boringly predictable in your inability to treat another like a human being. It doesn’t matter what I say, you would call me a liar, so why should I bother?
The irony of a European telling the Americans they can do it on their own is too delicious. Next time you have fascists marching through your country like diarrhea through a duck, save your own fucking asses.
Lisa Van S
Laurie,…. You go girl. Hopefully your words have penetrated some thick skulls… better yet, their sales pitch.
pg
You also said to Nathan a lot futher up:
“…I have decided that this is like arguing with my dog.”
So we’re ‘dogs’ to you. You just haven’t got the intellect to follow your own tactics have you. You are a pharma guy that has the arrogance to call intelligent people who have been injured by drugs YOU promote: “DOGS”.
Nice attitude Horus… CAT.
Lisa Van S
pg,…. Ahhhh,… yes he is predictable. On a more personal note,.. would you please refrain from the vulgar language, it doesnt sound very nice, Thanks
pg
Horus you came onto this page and you called us, people standing up against GSK threatening a patient, “DOGS” and you have the impudence (and probably the influence of alcohol given the language in your last comment) and arrogance to then attack people who try to present the facts?
pg
Lisa, did I swear? I can’t see where, or did you mean Horus who has used some pretty foul language. If you mean my use of the word ‘bitch’, I was actually repeating what Horus had just called me. :-)
pg
Lisa: I was answering this:
“HorusCat
pg,
You’re a bitch and I’m not conversing with you anymore. You don’t talk, you slander and abuse, and frankly, I’m too old for it.
Matt,
I’d be very interested in hearing more about your story, should you ever care to share it with me.
HC”
Lisa Van S
Sorry pg!!! My mistake,It was HC…
pg
Lisa, I think you’ll find the bad language if from Horus, may he has been drinking or something. I’ve just explained the ‘bitch’ reference, and this also is language from HORUS not from me:
“HorusCat
pg,
You harangue, you abuse, you debase, you attack. You’re boringly predictable in your inability to treat another like a human being. It doesn’t matter what I say, you would call me a liar, so why should I bother?
The irony of a European telling the Americans they can do it on their own is too delicious. Next time you have fascists marching through your country like diarrhea through a duck, save your own fucking asses.”
Drinking with SSRIs is understandable, it winds people up so they desperately need a drink. And the result is the rage you see in Horus’ message.
pg
Lisa, don’t worry - its OK :-) Its hard to keep up with fast moving comments.
Nite girl.
pg
By the way HorusCat, when you’ve calmed down, can you provide the evidence about how its all different in the US and how what happened to Matthew and lots of others doesn’t happen there because you all can sue the doctors?
I’ll check back tomorrow when you might have calmed down and answered.
pg
Horus, I guess when you said this:
“HorusCat
pg,
You harangue, you abuse, you debase, you attack. You’re boringly predictable in your inability to treat another like a human being. It doesn’t matter what I say, you would call me a liar, so why should I bother?
The irony of a European telling the Americans they can do it on their own is too delicious. Next time you have fascists marching through your country like diarrhea through a duck, save your own fucking asses.”
…that you’re talking about the second world war?
I think you’ll find that Europe fought it for a few years without the assistance of the US - and hadn’t lost it - but were grateful for the help of the US at the end?
And that it has nothing to do with the pharma situation? I wasn’t born then, and I doubt you were. Have a good nights sleep.
HorusCat
pg,
Done with you. And email Bob Fiddaman; he can tell you I’m a woman. Haven’t been drinking, just fed up with your sanctimonious blather. I said that talking to you is like talking to a dog–that is not calling you a dog, simply explaining that I say words, but you don’t respond to content, you name-call and sneer. Just like when I talk to my dog; I say words, and he hears, “blah, blah, blah.” That is obviously what happens with you, because I say words, and you respond with nastiness. Then when I respond in kind, you get really mean and go with the must be drinking and rage lines. You are obviously enraged and projecting; I am amused at you. I spoke to you like a human being, you responded with sarcasm, ad hominem attacks, nastiness and malice. Then you get all uppity when you get it back. Typical. Like I’ve said before, you don’t want anyone on this site who doesn’t toe your line. You’ve got your story and you’re sticking to it.
You want things to be different wherever the hell you live? Start your own companies and develop your own drugs. Write your own regulatory rules and do your own trials. But see, that can’t be done in the grand welfare state that is Europe. There is no profit in developing anything in Europe (except for maybe cars in Germany), because you tax the hell out of everyone and everything. That is why drugs are primarily developed in the US and Japan. Entrepreneurs and venture capital flock to the US because risk is rewarded.
We don’t make any money off you, anyway, to speak of. Kick US pharma out and do it all yourself. No skin off our noses.
pg
Horus, no you didn’t. You called ‘everyone’ a dog that didn’t agree with Nathan. This is what you said:
“HorusCat
Nathan!!
I’m sorry bud, I was out of pocket yesterday, driving to bama to see my Mom and Dad with the jabbering masses in tow. Actually, I gave them some Zyrim and it shut them up for hours. (I know YOU will get the joke.)
I would have been here to chime in with you, even though I have decided that this is like arguing with my dog. Nothing you say will penetrate because they are like that guy who got caught in a lie and said, “That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.” They have no perception of you as a human being, only as fraudulent monster out to kill hundreds of unsuspecting sheeple.
Hey, if you are comfortable, email Ed and ask him if he will hook us up with each other’s emails.
Hang in there, buddy!!! You are a good man!!”
Perhaps you need some sleep? This page was about GSK bullying someone in the United Kingdom, not about you and your defense of SSRIs and how effective you believe they are.
I’m not “enraged”.
I do think though you have no idea (or don’t like) what we want. We want people to be safe. We want drug companies to NOT hide negative data that shows their drug can KILL CHILDREN and adults.
We also want drug companies top STOP bullying patients and academics.
GSK is a British company. We WILL stop the bullying. And we WILL stop reps from repeating ad nauseum how we are a minority and how beneficial a drug is.
That is drugs that have had their negative data hidden.
I won’t ‘email Bob Fiddiman’ to ask about you. I’m not interested, as I’ve said before, whether you’re a male or female, and can’t understand why you push so hard that you’re either. Why on earth do you find it so important? It seems to be because Lisa said she knew who you were, and from then on you’re determined to be a female. You may be, I’m not interested.
You’ve called me ’sanctimonious’ quite often, not only on this page. I am, according to you from another page, a ’sanctimonious prig’.
The thing is HorusCat, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. You don’t know whether I’m a male of female - does it bother me? No. Have I told you which? No.
To say you might have been drinking was a kinder way of explain your ‘f***’ words language away than blaming your personality, or would you have preferred me to come back on you accusing you of being a sober foul mouthed person?
Someone in the UK has been threatened by GLAXOSMITHKLINE when they knowingly hid data showing an EIGHTFOLD INCREASE suicidality for over a decade. They also hid an INCREASE IN SUIDICALITY IN CHILDREN for several years. THEN they threaten someone who exposed that.
THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DISCUSSING. You’ve already said you know little about Paxil other than its a bad drug, or words to that effect, and that paxil doesn’t interest you.
So why are you parading your personality on a site when you have little interest in the topic?
Are you defending GLAXOSMITHLKINE
pg
Anyway, I’m going offline and I’m most honored Horus that you as a drug rep find me so dangerous that you need to keep attacking as in ‘like pg said’ ‘people like pg’ etc. LOL.
pg
PS, you’re right.
HorusCat
pg,
You have been malicious to me from the moment I got on this site. You have said truly awful things, far worse than me saying that talking to you is like talking to a dog. Obviously, you are unable to read context from a comment–or rather, you prefer to act obtuse and pretend like you don’t get the context of a remark. You are also acting from a double-standard. Matt dropped the Queen Mother and you said nothing. I finally lose my temper with you and you act like I killed your mother. What’s wrong with the f-word anyway?
You know, at the end of the day, corporations are going to lie, and people are going to die. I don’t have any control over GSK in the UK, and neither, really, do you. But I can control how I speak to any single human being. I have been rude to you, but I have also attempted to be civil. I have attempted to engage you and hear what you are saying. You have been consistently malicious. YOU don’t see people as individuals, you see categories. You see “drug rep” = monster; you don’t see a person. I read this site and I see people. When they engage me civilly, as Matt did and AA did, I get interested in their stories. You don’t really care about humans, or you would treat everyone, including me, like a human. You only care about your cause. I’m sitting here in bed next to two of my sons, sleeping peacefully, and I can go to sleep knowing that ultimately, I see you as a human being who has obviously been tremendously hurt somehow. You are incapable of seeing me as a human. I feel sorry for you.
pg
You didn’t say that talking to me was like talking to a dog.
You said “THEY”. ie, everyone who disagreed with Nathan. Do I have to repeat your post AGAIN?
Matt was swearing about the industry, not at a person directly. There’s a difference. And I didn’t act like you’d killed my mother. I wouldn’t have said anything if Lisa hadn’t mistakenly though it was me using that language.
I have not been consistently malicious. In several posts to other people you have referred to me in a ‘derogatory way’ as in ‘like pg says’ or ‘we don’t want people like pg to say what drugs people can take’ (not exactly - but I don’t have the energy to “quote” you exactly).
When you have been civil, you have done so in a … I’m not sure how to explain this but you have that pharma way of being nice and then saying “but you ARE a minority” or “SSRIS ARE beneficial” etc.
You are wrong about control over GSK. They, and every other drug company, rely on people’s conception of their drugs to make their profit. People who speak out do actually make a difference. If academics and the people hadn’t spoken out there would be no warnings on the drugs. That was a result of a ‘minority’ of vocals.
I don’t see all drug reps as being monsters at all. Most of them I would think are oblivious to whats happening. Those who DO know the score and do all they can to disrupt debate, like that of how GSK is bullying some patient, are not so oblivious to whats going on, they clearly know some of it to be trying to change the topic etc. The “monster” part of what you said is, I’m afraid, a figment of your imangination, I certainly haven’t called anyone a monster.
I care a great deal about fellow human beings, thats why I spend a lot of time trying to stop fraud in science that injures and kills many of them, it isn’t any easy thing to do, I’d feel much better if I was doing what I wanted to do rather than fighting pharma fraud.
I care a great deal when people kill children for profit.
I’m not sitting in bed right now as I wouldn’t be able to reach the pc, but you have me all wrong Horus. I see a lot of people, some of them are good people, some of them are bad.
I see children who have died because of lies about Paxil by GSK, Zoloft by Pfizer, Prozac by Lilly and of course other drugs such as antipsychotics. I know the parents of some of those.
I just prefer to defend the people injured or killed by drugs than to defend the killing by fraud by lying, fraudulent drug companies.
Which is why I’m posting here.
Pfizer, by the way, miscoded suicidality in Zoloft as nausea. As did Lilly with Prozac and GlaxoSmithKline with paxil.
Pfizer also dismissed a trial participant who became homicidal and suicidal on Day 11 of a clinical trial of zoloft, and said he was dismissed for nausea and other ‘minor’ side effects. A child was imprisoned for 30 years because of PFIZER hiding negative data on Zoloft.
Children have committed suicide, and some homicide then suicde because of corporate lies.
I have never defended fraud, and don’t intend to start doing so in drug manufacture where it kills innocent, vulnerable people.
Think what you want of me Horus, I won’t make a jot of difference because I’ll keep fighting my best to stop children being killed by drug companies.
GLAXOSMITHKLINE has committed serious misconduct regarding suicides on Paxil, and yet has sent a letter to a patient to try to silence his protest.
This is what this page is about, isn’t it?
Sleep well.
PS. You’re wrong on this one :-)
HorusCat
And I’m giggling to myself thinking of what nastiness you’re going to come up with in reply to my latest post. I guess I should have higher expectations, but I don’t.
pg
Horus, I’ve replied.
pg
You mostly attacked me when I was posting ARTICLES you don’t like Horus. You didn’t like the “quotes”, and in one comment you did state it was no good me using “quotes”. The “quotes” were by others, I simply posted them. You having a go at me was your way to dismiss the “quotes” but it doesn’t work, because the information is there and attacking someone for doing so, dismissing them, is immaterial.
I prefer to use quotes and a link from people who have more knowledge than I do, its more informative, and there isn’t a risk of interpreting the meaning incorrectly.
We all have different preferences in how we comment, and thats usually my choice of doing things when fighting pharma fraud.
I hope you get a good night’s sleep.
Matthew Holford
HorusCat wrote:
“…Matt,
I’d be very interested in hearing more about your story, should you ever care to share it with me…”
You can reach me on my blog’s email address, which I created in a tongue-in-cheek way some time ago, but never used: audit.committee[at]hotmail.co.uk - I’ll keep an eye one it, now! There’s not much to tell, really - by anybody’s assessment and in broad terms I’ve been treated very badly by a series of people who thought that they were in positions of power, and didn’t have to concern themselves overly with my experience of their conduct. When I mirrored them, or complained about their conduct, I was stonewalled and ostracized.
That’s not going to happen with GSK, which is another reason that I use official sources, juxtaposed with the Bedford Massive’s own ramblings, much like Bob, I guess. Incidentally, I think the reason that most patient activists have a seemingly one-eyed view of this matter is that the Worshipful Company does not engage with them - that is, we never hear their version of events. That being true, we only have our perspective to look at, which is only concerned, in this case, with our experiences consequent to the use of SSRIs, including the stonewalling that we receive, when we try to get additional information.
Anyway, mail me if you want to talk further. I warn you, I have a pretty leftfield view, on some subjects!
Matt
BOB FIDDAMAN
GlaxoSmithKline - The Internal Documents
http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2008/04/glaxosmithkline-internal-documents.html
Also read Evelyn Pringles take on things:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_080407_glaxo_fights_against.htm
Fid
truthman30
Woah ..
This discussion is becoming very heated..
Pg.
I wouldn’t bother trying to converse with HC, she obviously came here to inflame and deflect away from the reality of the issues..
And she tried to engage in name calling with me after reading one comment..
Best not to have dialogue with individuals like that..
The irony is they are showing themselves up by their obnoxious behavior..
Drug reps don’t have a great reputation and now we know why…
HorusCat
Matt,
I will email you. I’m ok with leftfield views, as long as the person holding them is ok with my rightfield views. I’d like a participant’s perspective on this. Look for an email from my yahoo account.
pg,
Thank you for replying in a civil manner. I am sorry that I insulted you. I use polemic to make a point. I believe GSK committed fraud, although I will have to do all the reading and that will take some time. I would have to see all of the data–from Pfizer’s side and the FDA side before I believe that they miscoded suicidality as nausea. And I would point to the conflicting data out now about suicide and decreases SSRI use. Despite what truthman says, there is no company upside to this, really–the SSRIs are off-patent, except for Lexapro. Someone who used to be connected to Pfizer through Zoloft doesn’t gain anything by defending Zoloft now.
My point on this has been that we need a balanced approach to the use and discussion of medication. You and others have had very bad experiences and have every right, and perhaps a responsibility, to speak out about them. I and many others have had life-saving experiences with these meds, and we have a right, and a responsibility, to tell our stories. The goal is to create a situation where all parties have the incentive to tell the truth–including the industry. If you see the posts on preemption, you will see the ideas around creating this type of situation.
My gripe with you, and others on this site, is that you seemingly ascribe all the blame to pharma, as though we are omnipotent. I see all parties participating in this–the physicians who are taught (and not by drug companies) that the brain is like a chemical machine and therefore subject to chemical tinkering (and I believe this is right in line with our loss of faith and belief in the mystical nature of humanness), the patients who want quick relief and not hard work, a society which doesn’t want to spend money on mental illness (a pill and a 15 minute visit to the doctor is cheaper than hours of counselin, g, cognitive behavioral therapy (which is almost impossible to find), spiritual direction (if a person is so inclined), good nutrition, sound sleep, etc.
It is all well and good to demonize pharma–and fraud should be punished with criminal sanctions. But change will only come when all participants accept their responsibility. You and Lisa are well-acquainted with both the risks of pharmaceuticals in children and, probably, alternative ways of helping children in distress. Many parents don’t want to fool with it. They just want their kids to be little zombies. This is not pharma’s doing–we don’t advertise about kids, and doctors are not out there pulling the kids into the offices. Parents are bringing their kids in because they want a quick fix. Teachers are suggesting parents take their kids to the doctor because they don’t want rambunctious kids in their classes. We live in a society that teaches kids consumerism and superficial fixes to feel happy, and then they feel empty and lonely and no one wants to give them what they really need, because the adults feel the same way and don’t even know how to fill up their own empty spaces.
I AM proud of what I do and the way I detail my medications. I will continue to adhere to FDA guidelines and tell my doctors the benefits AND risks of my drugs. I will continue to watch those above me for adherence to on-label marketing, and I will ask questions about the data and post-marketing events.
You, although you bug the shit out of me, have pushed me to see things differently. I am grateful for that. I will do the reading you have posted. However, I suspect that I will continue to see things somewhat differently than you do–not in terms of advocating fraud, but in terms of believing that these medications are useful and need to be available to an informed public and physician base.
HorusCat
Matt,
I tried to email you at audit.committee(at)hotmail.co.uk and got an error message. Did I get the address wrong? I think you can email me at cathorus(at)yahoo.com. I think. I just set that up and am not entirely sure how it works. Anyway, try me if you want–and I’ll try you again.
Cheers!
HC
pg
Truthman: Thanks :-) I shouldn’t get so wound up about things anyway.
Horus, thank you for your civil reply too and I’m sorry for getting so wound up in the first place.
We see a lot of things differently, though their are some points (such as teachers wanting children to behave more managably) etc.
We won’t agree on many things and one of those is Truthman, I think that he is aware of the following and is simply doing what it takes, and I’ll see if I can explain it clearly enough:
Its difficult to stick with a concept of a ‘balanced view’ for me when for so many years the view has been created heavily promoted by people who’s business is to make money and look after their shareholders, and by people who have conflicts of interest, choosing to be less than transparent in their conduct too.
This has created an extremely unbalance view heavily in favour of misconduct in science which still exists (which is why we are ‘the minority’ and is also why Matthew can’t get anywhere when asking questions and why GSK have bullied Fiddaman, and many other cases that we haven’t touched on.
Imbalance of that enormity means that the minority vocals need to work hard at it far harder than would have been necessary if the situation hadn’t been created on such a massive scale, just in order to try to bring at least a little balance back, because, after all, we are a minority voice in a hugely unbalanced system. System isn’t quite the right word, I’m not sure if you get what I mean on that sentence.
At least we can agree to disagree :-)
pg
One day I’ll finish a sentence correctly.
A sentence in there should have been:
‘We see a lot of things differently, though their are some points (such as teachers wanting children to behave more managably) etc, that we DO agree on.’
pg
Horus, a bit more exlanation.
Even though, as an example, we agree re Teachers - we’d disagree about the cause.
I think that its because of the
‘view that has been created and heavily promoted by people who’s business is to make money and look after their shareholders, and by people who have conflicts of interest, choosing to be less than transparent in their conduct too’
that the Teachers have that outlook or at least can implement their view, in the first place.
When you go back to each example back to the root, then none of this would have happened, millions of children wouldn’t be on drugs where many of them are simply behaving like children, teachers wouldn’t have got the idea that its acceptable to dumb-down the normal children, and in the parents situation the same thing applies.
So even where we do agree, we’re only agreeing superficially in reality?
All thats left it seems, is that the only agreement we probably truly have (on these issues of course, not about everything else in life!) is that agreement to disagree :-)
Matthew Holford
Horus Cat wrote:
“I tried to email you at audit.committee(at)hotmail.co.uk and got an error message…”
Hmmm. Don’t know why that didn’t work. I’ve sent you a test message…
Matt
horuscat
Pg,
Thanks for your reply. I hear that polemic is needed in order to make yourselves heard. I did much the same thing on this site–speaking more stridently than I normally would bec I am a lone voice.
Where you trace all the blame to pharma, I go deeper and blame the fact that science has become religion, and one of the tenets of this new religion is that we can explain everything mechanistically. We see this in physics, where they are searching for what they are calling the God particle. In neurophys and pharm, scientists and hence doctors believe that all behavior and emotion can be reduced to chemicals and electricity. Some believe that none, absolutely none, of our actions are freely made. Hence, a pedophile is not to be judged, but understood and somehow accommodated. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I don’t think pharma started this. I think it started with Darwin and the Industrial Revolution. (And yes, I do believe in evolution). It continued with Progressivism and the idea that people and society are perfectible. We can create Utopia and the Stepford people to inhabit it.
The idea that we could treat a brain like a chemistry lab is, I think, a logical follow-up on this: people are “broken” and can be made perfect with a little tinkering. This was reinforced with finding that the body responded like a machine when you adjusted blood pressure and lipids, etc.
Well I have been typing on my bberry while I drove (bad dog!) So I will finish up on the laptop now that we have arrived back at my parents.
HC
HorusCat
Back again.
So once we have this new religion of science, where everything is explainable and hence, manipulable, the final frontier is going to be the human brain. It isn’t pharma that is pushing to “decode” everyone’s DNA so that we can predict everything that is going to happen to your body by looking at your genes.
The upshot of this is what I would call, for lack of a better term, the loss of mystery. Where once we have a reverence for what we would call the spirit or the soul, now we have, not contempt–that’s not the right word–but a sense of familiarity, a sense of the ability to know and control everything about ourselves. In a way, we’ve become less than human–we’ve begun to see ourselves as machines.
I think neuropharmacology was a natural outgrowth of this movement, not the cause of it. I think pharma is a supreme example of the entrepreneurial among us seeing opportunity and acting on it. I disagree with you in that I don’t believe pharma is powerful enough to MAKE people go along with this concept as brain as science lab. I think that is where science and medicine were heading, and scientists and doctors WANT to believe that, because it gives the illusion of control. Things are working in concert; pharma is not the conductor of this orchestra.
I think individuals have bought into the same idea–I can fix myself the way I can fix my car, or the hard drive on my computer.
I think with kids it gets even more complicated. This has happened to some extent with adults, but especially with kids, the rise of “political correctness” has had a disastrous effect on behavior and discipline. It is no longer “correct” to discipline kids physically (I’m not a big spanker, but a swat now and then does wonders for a kid under 8); we now have to be our kids’ friends, and not their parents; authoritativeness is out, while being “nice” is in. Kids ARE more out of control than they used to be, I think–and where the community used to be comfortable disciplining the children, now everyone is afraid to speak up and say, “Hey! You can’t do that here!”
All of that means that the idea of “fixing” kids with pills looks like a good idea to many. To the teachers, who have fewer options for discipline and some really out-of-control kids, and to the parents, who may have lost the window of opportunity for teaching their kids how to behave.
And again, you have doctors who have been taught that the brain can be tweaked with a chemical here and a chemical there. Once again, where you would say pharma gave them that idea, I say that pharma took advantage of the idea.
Now, I am kind of out of my element with the kids thing, because we did not market Zoloft for depression in kids. We did depression trials and had safety data, but that was right at the end of the patent, and we never did anything with it. I can’t speak for Pfizer, but I can say that in the regional meetings I attended, the sales direction was never to sell Zoloft for anything but OCD in children.
Now, I don’t sell anything indicated for children, so I am not up on what is happening in child psychiatry offices. I see all the ADHD reps going in and out, but I don’t pay much attention. I tend to be with Lisa and you on the “let’s err on the side of almost never medicating children with neuroleptics (or anything else, for that matter)”, but I have seen some really aggressive, violent children who probably DO need to be medicated.
I would be perfectly comfortable with great restrictions on how medications may be marketed for child indications. I think physicians need to know their options–and child psychiatrists push the envelope all the time, but I think reasonable restrictions, beyond the current pharma guidelines that we follow, could be implemented.
Certainly there is NO excuse for fraud and cover-up. Like I said, I will read the Seroxat stuff so that I can see the extent to which you say they have gone. But we will probably continue to disagree on the degree of fraud (at least outside of GSK) and the intentions of the vast majority of those who work in pharma.
HC
HorusCat
pg,
You are very insistent that the drug-mentality “will not happen here!” I am guessing that here is Britain, because you speak English like a native…
What is stopping you? I don’t mean that in a pejorative way, just a curious way. It seems to me that there is much less incentive in the UK to use meds, because NHS are so concerned with cost control. Further, I may be wrong, but it does seem that outside of America, people aren’t quite so concerned with “fixing” themselves. You know, Americans are always into self-help and improvement, while at the same time not really wanting to do any actual WORK to accomplish all that perfection. It seems that Americans are also much more consumer-driven, so that HOLE that opens up inside of us when we focus so much on superficial things is bigger here in the States than it is elsewhere.
What IS it like over there? What do you see happening?
HorusCat
Matt,
Thanks. I changed the email address to leave out the “period” between audit and committee, and I didn’t get an error message, but apparently you didn’t get the message, either!! So someone out there got a random message from me and is wondering what the heck is going on.
I don’t know if Ed would share my email with you that I used to register on the site, but if he will, he has my permission to give it to you. I would just put it on the site, but I don’t want my company to know I am here. I don’t care if you or even pg or Lisa know, but I value my job and needs the benefits!
truthman30
” I think individuals have bought into the same idea–I can fix myself the way I can fix my car, or the hard drive on my computer ”
I do respect most of your last comments HC, but i would differ somewhat in that I don’t believe you can place any blame for the current “pill for every ill” concept on the heads of the individual ..
That said, it was nice to see some reasoned and clam discussion in the last few exchanges ..
HorusCat
truthman30,
Thanks! I am big on personal responsibility–I think it is the foundational tenet of a free society. I’ll have to disagree with you there, because I think many people want an easy fix. I would agree with you that there are all sorts of people out there who are willing to take advantage of that tendency in people–not just pharma, but nutraceutical folks, the ephedrine sellers, even the makers of those energy drinks…Heck, I think most of the commercialism in this society is preying on that desire we all have to just have SOMETHING to make us feel better.
If it’s not Viagra, it’s a new car. Although I must say that SHOES are always a cure what ails you. And lipstick. A new lipstick can make you feel like a whole new woman. For about $5.
Off to dinner. I have found that if I don’t feed my children, the neighbors call Child Protective Services.
pg
Horus
I appreciate the points you’ve made, but getting back to the post on GSK - their lawyers asked a patient to remove a video that has been made showing some main points of debate about the drug Paroxetine.
I believe that:
When drug makers lie about or obscure negative clinical trial data to get a drug approved, as GlaxoSmithKline did, it may puport to be science, but it is not science. It’s corruption.
When Key Opinion Leaders work with the industry and PR companies to push the benefits of those drugs, that is not science either. That is corruption.
What conclusion should we come to when a drug maker - in this case GlaxoSmithKline - who obscured negative trial data - tries to silence debate when a video is made criticising statements made by a GSK Key Opinion Leader for Europe?
Stifling debate can’t be science, so that too is corruption.
truthman30
pg..
I absolutely agree 100% with what you said in your lat comment
Spot on ..
:)
truthman30
http://pharmablogosphere.blogspot.com/
John Mack highlighting this too now..
truthman30
Sorry, Maybe its not John Mack ..
Not sure who writes the blog..
truthman30
http://infoaboutpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2008/04/speaking-up-about-seroxat.html
Psychiatry blog picked up the story too..
pg
Thanks TM :-) And you’re right, http://pharmablogosphere.blogspot.com
is one of John Mack’s blogs.
Matthew Holford
I was a bit disappointed that this discussion descended into the usual bunfight, so I blogged this, which kind of sums up how I view the whole thing:
http://itsquiteanexperience.blogspot.com/2008/04/mclibel-revisited-or-dont-look-back-in.html
Matt
Will
Matthew Holford in his link above:
“I, and one or two other people were a little disappointed that the discussion was often diverted towards the usual dichotomous “Pharma’s excellent/No it’s not, it’s shit” argument. Being a lawyer, albeit an academic one, I saw the argument as being largely legal in its nature.”
If only lawyers were there to protect the people from the beginning, right Matthew? That way those of us who say “its shit” would not have needed to be so ‘disappointing’ in our uneducated and unqualified views. Huh? Don’t dismiss people taking your side Matthew Holford, we may not be lawyers, but that doesn’t mean we are not academics.
Matthew Holford
Will wrote:
“…Don’t dismiss people taking your side Matthew Holford, we may not be lawyers, but that doesn’t mean we are not academics.”
I don’t believe that I dismissed anybody - on the contrary, I’m more than happy to engage anybody in a discussion on this subject. But it was not only me who felt that the discussion had been sidetracked from the issue of Bob Fiddaman’s apparent intimidation onto more familiar territory. And the intimidation of Bob Fiddaman most certainly is a legal issue.
In any event, it is not lawyers who are responsible for the policing of pharmaceutical companies. That is a matter for the regulators, and for those scientists, who choose to turn a blind eye to the way that these companies do business.
Matt
Angry Blogger vs Glaxo | Womenhealth
[...] Seroxat–the trade name in Britain for Paxil–posted this protest video in February. From Pharmalot.com. Yazan: admin Zaman: Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 12:12 am Kategori: Uncategorized [...]
myxafjd meuc
vjrwguky hvxcbfkz bwirlupa usobmw wuyr fcnds slim