Who’s Minding The Children? In The UK, It’s Glaxo?
34 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // July 6th, 2008 // 10:27 am
A scandal is mushrooming because the Schools Secretary has appointed a Glaxo exec to the board of the government’s official education watchdog agency, known as Ofsted. And the move occurred less than a month before the government awarded a reported $200 million contract to Glaxo for its HPV vaccine for school-age girls 12 years and older, which some parents fear will give a green light to teenage sex, The Daily Mail reports.
The appointment also comes at a time when a growing number of families are filing lawsuits against Glaxo over its Paxil antidepressent, claiming the drug caused suicide or attempted suicides. (Paxil is called Seroxat in the UK). Consequently, critics say the decision by Schools Secretary Ed Balls (pictured at top) has conferred moral authority on Glaxo and commercially strengthened its position at a time when children are being targeted by pharma with meds for treating ADHD, in particular, the paper writes. Glaxo markets Dexedrine in the US for ADHD.
Glaxo “is looking at new markets to create and I am disturbed that someone from Glaxo is considered appropriate for a position with Ofsted,” Graham Stringer, a Labor Party member of Parliament, tells the paper. The appointment of Paul Blackburn, a Glaxo senior vp and financial controller (pictured to the right), prompted one childcare expert to boycott an Ofsted conference this past Friday.
Blackburn, 53, was one of four businessmen installed on the Ofsted board last month. “They bring with them a breadth of private sector experience and a passion to help improve the lives of children and learners,” Balls said in a statement announcing the appointments. In a new statement issued to the paper, Balls says: “The Ofsted Board determines the strategic direction for Ofsted and ensures that its functions are performed efficiently and effectively, but has no operational responsibilities. Paul Blackburn was selected to become a non-executive member of the Ofsted Board for his financial expertise and experience. He is appointed as an individual and does not represent GlaxoSmithKline.”
But there is also criticism the move suggests a “cozy relationship” between pharma and the government, according to the paper, which notes that Balls is one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s closest advisers. Last year, Brown named former Glaxo ceo JP Pierre Garnier to his new Business Council, while Children’s Minister Margaret Hodge made Glaxo chairman Richard Sykes a member of the Higher Education Funding Council.
The paper goes on to note that the Labor Party and Glaxo were also linked through the so-called cash-for-honors controversy. Although Glaxo stresses it does not make donations to political parties, it has invested heavily in a firm run by a man who has. In 2004, Labor awarded a peerage to party donor Paul Drayson, founder of vaccine firm PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, and made him Minister for Defense Procurement. It later emerged that Glaxo had invested about $350 million in PowderJect.
Outlining his reasons for pulling out of the Ofsted conference he was due to address, childcare expert Phil Frampton blamed Glaxos history of testing drugs on children in care, the paper writes. He cited an episode in 2004 in which drugs were tested on 100 babies and toddlers with HIV at the Incarnation Children’s Center in New York. Glaxo was one of the companies that supplied the drugs.
At the time, the paper writes, Glaxo insisted that all trials followed stringent standards and complied with local laws and regulations. But Frampton, who called Blackburn’s appointment “really outrageous,” told the paper that “drug trials using children in care are a modern form of child slavery, only more insidious. Do we want the modern Bodysnatchers at the heart of the care system using their position on Ofsted as a cover for their global exploitation of children in care?”
In 2000, Glaxo was accused of extraordinary “obfuscation” by Ireland’s senate after a commission unsuccessfully sought files concerning vaccine trials it conducted in the Sixties and Seventies on children in care homes, the paper writes. At the time, Glaxo said: “‘Glaxo Wellcome regrets any distress that may have been caused to individuals involved in these trials.”
This weekend, the drugmaker rejected criticism of Blackburn’s appointment and described Frampton’s comments as “without foundation”, according to the paper. Glaxo “acts properly and responsibly in the conduct of all its clinical trials, including those related to children,” the drugmaker said.
Hat tip to Seroxat Sufferers
BOB FIDDAMAN
I have actually wrote to Ofsted.
I am so angry about this.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to you to air my disgust at the recent appointment of Paul Blackburn to the board of education at Ofsted.
Here, you are appointing someone from a company whose history regarding the safety of children is quite appalling. I could give you a list… or links to websites where GSK have disregarded children’s health but I am sure you already know this don’t you?
Isn’t it ironic that GlaxoSmithKline have recently won a reported £100million contract to vaccinate all schoolgirls of 12 and 13 against the sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer!
Have Ofsted done their research on this vaccination?
Apparently, Mr. Blackburn has a ‘passion’ for helping children. Wonderful. Was this the criteria for the selection process when appointing him to the board of education?
By appointing an employee of GlaxoSmithKline to the board of education I put it to you [Ofsted] that you are whoring yourselves to the GlaxoSmithKline.
Here we have a company who have a tainted history regarding piss poor drugs given to children and YOU cover them in garlands by appointing their senior vice president!
Are you not aware of the 4 year investigation that the MHRA have just concluded regarding GlaxoSmithKline’s suppression of information of Seroxat? Evidence was held back that basically, could have save children’s lives. They used a loophole in the EU Law not to release this very important data!
I find this ‘partnership with GlaxoSmithKline and Ofsted unhealthy and rigorously oppose it because you have taken on board a senior vice president of a company who target the vulnerable [Our children]
I see that one of Ofsted’s ‘strategic priorities’, the 12-strong non-executive board is required to ‘safeguard and promote the rights and welfare of children’. Do you really think you are doing this by appointing Mr. Blackburn?
One of Ofsted’s priorities is to monitor children in care - are you aware of the claims that GlaxoSmithKline supplied drugs that were tested on 100 babies and small children with HIV at the Incarnation Children’s Centre in New York? Surely, you must have done your homework on this?
To use babies and small children in ‘experiments’ is scandalous wouldn’t you say?
I am outraged at this appointment and hugely disappointed in Ofsted. You are exploiting children by this appointment and for that I hold you in complete contempt.
You disgust me.
Yours sincerely
Mr. Robert Fiddaman
Author of Seroxat Sufferers
http://fiddaman.blogspot.com
Cc - Copies of this email have been circulated to campaigners for better mental health and medicine regulations. I urge them ALL to write to Ofsted at their earliest convenience and to also highlight this subject on their respective websites and blogs.
Teresa Cooper
“If Glaxo and OFSTED can’t see why I appose Paul Blackburn being on the board where decisions are made for vunerable children in care then I invite them to read my book Pin Down/ Trust no one so they can read the damage that is done and learn something and this is a very good example.
When a drug company that has been exposed for its failings to vunerable children is given such a high position in children’s services I have to question their motives.
Since when did having a passion for helping children give someone the qualifications and skills to be in such a position?
A story that recently springs to mind on yet another drug company is that of the charges against Alan Hesketh vice-president and head of global patents at Pfizer, one of the world’s biggest drug manufacturers who has recently been arrested and charged with child porn, distributing it across the net and various other charges.
What else don’t we know about drug companies interest in children?
So far there has been interest in drug trials on them, not disclosing information that has led to deaths of children/teenagers and then there is the situation in New York with yes, children and thats just to touch on a few
Psychiatrists, doctors, drug companies. Any connections between any of them?
Doctors and psychiatrists dole out prescription drugs that of course drug companies manufacture and who are the ones doctors and psychiatrists have trusted contact with? children in care thats who. Children in care were subjected to major amounts of psychiatric drugs back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and all of them had a psychiatrist or doctor involved in the drugs they were forcibly given without consent leading to the severe traumatisation of many vunerable children as they spent their teenage years in care like zombies. The government blatantly ignored this situation and had no idea on how many children were drugged nor looked into the figures despite public outrage because they didn’t care and I wonder who made money out of the massive amounts of drugs used on vunerable children in care? I wonder who will be monitoring the wrongful diagnoses by psychiatrists and doctors on a looked after childs mental health who are inevitably drugged or on anti depressants supposedly for their best interest. I believe it is not in a childs best interest and having Glaxo involved in the welfare of looked after children would possibly open up the flood gates to more children in care being diagnosed for the sake of diagnoses by doctors and psychiatrists who have an unhealthy interest in everything but the childs welbeing.
Maybe I am going off track a little or maybe not but what I do know is the risks and dangers we are putting children in if this board member is not taken off the OFSTED board. I do not believe for one minute that his interest is purely because he likes helping children given Glaxo’s track record”
Nathan
Once again, much ado about nothing. Before long, pharmaceutical workers are not going to be allowed to volunteer their services in government agencies, watchdog agencies, sunday schools, or even animal shelters. Come on people… we in the pharma industry do have hearts too. We aren’t all greedy slimebags. Maybe this guy genuinely wants to help kids. Regardless:
1) This guy is a financial controller at GSK — not anyone who would be even remotely involved in clinical trial design or R&D.
2) Ofsted is an educational watchdog group - hardly anything to do with prescription drug patterns. No conflict of interest here.
3) The board already seems to be a collection of “who’s-who” in British and politics — this appointment certainly does not seem out of ordinary. None of them are involved in children’s work in their 9-5 workweek. Here’s the current list of board members:
George Battersby, Director of Human Resources, Cable & Wireless
Paul Blackburn, Senior Vice President Financial Controller, GlaxoSmithKline
Yusuf Chuku, Founding Partner, Staufenberger, Smith & Butte
Sharon Collins, Executive Director of Operational Services, Scope
Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector
David MacLeod, Senior Advisor, Towers Perrin
Jane Roberts, Director of Quality and Performance, Islington Primary Care Trust
John Roberts, former Chief Executive, Royal Mail and Deputy Chair, BECTA
Vijay Sodiwala, Managing Director, Digital Ventures, Chime Communications plc
Museji Takolia, Group Chairman, Metropolitan Housing Partnership
Chris Trinick, former Chief Executive, Lancashire County Council.
truthman30
“Once again, much ado about nothing ?”..
For a drug company which was recently let off the hook for concealing data about its anti-depressant Paxil- Seroxat causing suicide In children,
I would hardly say this controversy is “much ado about nothing” Nathan…
It looks to me like “much ado about rather a lot”…
Stuart Jones
Nathan, The appointment of Paul Blackburn is a huge conflict of interest. Further, Ofsted has a remit (see below for some, and access to) which far exceeds schools inspections, I suggest you visit the site and explore a little before commenting more about this much ado about nothing, but if you don’t I’ll understand. Some people simply believe Pharma is always just, honest and truthful in all things. Mostly those employed by it though in my experience. Regards, Stuart.
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.455968b0530071c4828a0d8308c08a0c/?vgnextoid=2adf811f9de50110VgnVCM1000003507640aRCRD
The purpose of inspection is to ensure that your social care service continues to meet the National Minimum Standards and the needs of children and young people who use the service.How often we visit will depend on what the law says and the judgements we made at past inspections about the quality of care you provide.
The law currently says that:
children’s homes must be inspected a minimum of twice a year
residential special schools must be inspected a minimum of once a year
the following must be inspected a minimum of once every three years:
residential family centres
boarding schools
further education colleges
local authority adoption services
local authority fostering services
local authority private fostering arrangements
voluntary adoption agencies
independent fostering agencies
adoption support agencies.
Nathan
Stuart -
I did look at the website — that’s where I found the list of board members. I still don’t see a COI. Where is there any responsibility of Ofsted involving prescription drugs? You certainly didn’t list any in your post.
Dr. Sal Giorgianni
Four-Score and Seven Years Ago if someone were to have come up with a product that would prevent the majority of a type of cancer from occurring they would have been heralded worldwide. Today those who did so are vilified. What an odd world. What a sad world.
What would the cynics have done to Thomas Edison? To Louis Pasture? To Madame Currie? And our time is enlightened time? Would anyone of these who profited from their hard work been rewarded or ostracized?
What should Glaxo do? Give the vaccine to the state for free? Should they not have studied it in children so that if someone wanted to use it in children they could only do so at their own risk and then be criticized for not studying it in children? Should they, after discovering this product, decided not to sell it, for whatever reason? After all it is their property. Think of the scandal then.
To vilify this individual also seems rather disrespectful to me. It is a form of prejudice as toxic as any other type of discriminatory prejudice. Does anyone have any information to suggest that this gentleman, other than the fact that he works for a PhARMA company, know him to be dishonorable? Does anyone believe that the conflict which is so obvious to all cannot be managed?
What an odd world. What a sad world.
Stuart Jones
Nathan,
I note you did not offer any correction to your earlier view that Ofsted was merely a schools inspectorate.
I’m not your tutor, nor am I paid to be, by Pharma, or any other; nonetheless, I will suggest you use your obvious intellect and literary skills to delve a little deeper into the possible benefits which may, and certainly could be, interpreted as being accrued as a result of a Big Pharma company, by having an insider executive officer on the board of an institution such as Ofsted. Suggested lines of investigation for you to follow: a) Do pharmaceutical companies market psychiatric drugs for children? b) Do they always do this in a manner which is appropriate to child safety? c) Have they marketed unapproved psychiatric drugs for off label use in children? d) Have GSK previously obfuscated clinical trial data to the extent they have been accused of fraud, and charged with such on both sides of the pond?
The COI would appear to be obvious, even to the most dogmatic proponents of pharmaceutical companies, and or it’s employees, but if you can’t see that, it’s your problem, and as I stated, I’m not your tutor, much less your mentor. But, please do the research. I’m sure you’ll discover why most people would regard having a corporate officer of GSK sitting on the board of Ofsted as being a conflict of interest
Regards,
Stuart.
truthman30
Need we look no further than this very sad and disturbing article from the Observer newspaper UK in 2004?..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/04/usa.highereducation
UK firm tried HIV drug on orphans
GlaxoSmithKline embroiled in scandal in which babies and children were allegedly used as ‘laboratory animals’
Antony Barnett in New York
The Observer, Sunday April 4, 2004
Orphans and babies as young as three months old have been used as guinea pigs in potentially dangerous medical experiments sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, an Observer investigation has revealed.
British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is embroiled in the scandal. The firm sponsored experiments on the children from Incarnation Children’s Centre, a New York care home that specialises in treating HIV sufferers and is run by Catholic charities.
The children had either been infected with HIV or born to HIV-positive mothers. Their parents were dead, untraceable or deemed unfit to look after them.
According to documents obtained by The Observer, Glaxo has sponsored at least four medical trials since 1995 using Hispanic and black children at Incarnation. The documents give details of all clinical trials in the US and reveal the experiments sponsored by Glaxo were designed to test the ’safety and tolerance’ of Aids medications, some of which have potentially dangerous side effects. Glaxo manufactures a number of drugs designed to treat HIV, including AZT.
Normally trials on children would require parental consent but, as the infants are in care, New York’s authorities hold that role.
The city health department has launched an investigation into claims that more than 100 children at Incarnation were used in 36 experiments - at least four co-sponsored by Glaxo. Some of these trials were designed to test the ‘toxicity’ of Aids medications. One involved giving children as young as four a high-dosage cocktail of seven drugs at one time. Another looked at the reaction in six-month-old babies to a double dose of measles vaccine.
Most experiments were funded by federal agencies like the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Until now Glaxo’s role had not emerged.
In 1997 an experiment co-sponsored by Glaxo used children from Incarnation to ‘obtain tolerance, safety and pharmacokinetic’ data for Herpes drugs. In a more recent experiment, the children were used to test AZT. A third experiment sponsored by Glaxo and US drug firm Pfizer investigated the ‘long-term safety’ of anti-bacterial drugs on three-month-old babies.
The medical establishment has defended the trials arguing they enabled these children to obtain state-of-the-art therapy they would otherwise not have received for potentially fatal illnesses.
However, health campaigners argue there is a difference between providing the latest drugs and experimentation. They claim many of the experiments were ‘phase 1 trials’ - among the most risky - and that HIV tests for babies were not a reliable indicator of actual infection and therefore toxic drugs could have been given to healthy infants. HIV drugs are similar to those used in chemotherapy and can have serious side-effects.
Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, said the children had been treated like ‘laboratory animals’.
‘These are some of the most vulnerable individuals in the country and there appears to be a policy of giving drug firms access to them,’ she said. ‘Throughout the history of medical research we have seen prisoners abused, the mentally ill abused and now poor kids in a care home.’
Sharav has urged the US Food and Drug Administration to investigate and has demanded full disclosure of all adverse effects suffered by the children, including deaths. Brooklyn Democrat councillor Bill de Blasio is also demanding that New York’s Administration for Children’s Services, which approved the trials, reveal who gave consent and on what grounds.
Glaxo has confirmed it provided funds for some of the experiments but denied any improper action. A spokeswoman said: ‘These studies were implemented by the US Aids Clinical Trial Group, a clinical research network paid for by the National Institutes of Health. Glaxo’s involvement in such studies would have been to provide study drugs or funding but we would have no interactions with the patients.
‘Generally speaking, clinical research is carefully regulated in the US and it would be the responsibility of the appropriate authorities to ensure all subjects in a clinical trial provided appropriate, informed consent to conform with all local laws and regulations regarding legal authority in the case of minors.’
The Incarnation trials were run by Columbia University Medical Centre doctors. Columbia spokeswoman Annie Bayne said there had been no clinical trials at Incarnation since 2000 and that consent for the children was provided by the Administration for Children’s Services, which uses a panel of doctors and lawyers to determine whether the benefits of a trial for each child outweighs the risks. ‘There are many safeguards in the system. HIV is eventually a fatal disease, but drug therapy has lengthened life significantly,’ said Bayne.
A spokesman for Incarnation said: ‘The purpose of the trials was to test the efficacy of HIV medication … These trials were based on scientific evidence of their potential value in the treatment of HIV-infected children.’
Dr. Sal Giorgianni
Truthman30.
As noted in your outcall from the Observer…
“…‘These studies were implemented by the US Aids Clinical Trial Group, a clinical research network paid for by the National Institutes of Health.”
Yes Glaxo had money in the program but it was conducted by the US Federal Government Laboratory. The protocol was approved by a US Federal Government Laboratory. The Instituional Review Bard to protect the rights of human subjects was most likely under the auspiceies of the US Federal Government Laboratory.
And you assert that it is Glaxo who should bare the brunt of your and likeminded individuals ire.
Why?
Lisa Van S
Dr. Sal,
GSK had the authority to oversee the clinical trial, and the “POWER” to halt it.
Michael Smith
Dear Sirs:
I have worked for GSK for over 25 years. I am currently involved in bringing ultrapure Omega 3’s DHA ( docosahexaenoic acid) to the market to alleviate symptoms of ADHD / ADD. The problem as always for the Pharma industry is that they products like Paxil / Dexedrine to fuel the research into HPV vaccine. Money fuels the research into vaccines to protect Human health. Remember the Polio vaccine. The 2nd vaccine that came along was the Sabin vaccine wholly backed by the U.S. government. It killed many people yet the Salk vaccine was villified and yet in retrospect it wiped out Polio
truthman30
“And you assert that it is Glaxo who should bare the brunt of your and likeminded individuals ire.
Why?”
If a pharmaceutical company knowingly endorses or funds this kind of thing, yes they should be held responsible, if they are unaware, then that’s fair enough, but I have serious doubts that they are unaware of where there money goes…
Sam
See http://www.psychdrugdangers.com/ParoxetineSuicides.html
which lists the FDA MedWatch (Adverse Event Reporting System) reports received between 2004 and 2007 where paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat and a couple other brand names) was identified in the report as the Primary Suspect Drug responsible for the listed adverse reactions and where the adverse reactions list included “Attempted Suicide, Completed Suicide, Depression Suicidal, Homicidal Ideation, Homicide, Hypomania, Mania, Murder or Suicidal Ideation”
5,011 Individual Safety Reports on 2,652 Cases were submitted that included 1,348 unique reports of Suicidal Ideation, 859 Completed Suicides, 529 Attempted Suicides (not completed), 120 Homicidal Ideations and 63 Homicides (the act, not the body count).
While many of the reports did not include a patient age (approx 1/3′d of the MedWatch reports do not include patient age) there are many, many reports on pediatric (under 18) Cases.
In the FDA MedWatch reports, Paxil (and its similar brand names, Seroxat, etc) has the highest incidence of Suicidal Ideation and Completed Suicides among the various psychiatric drugs. And bit off topic, but relevant, is that Paxil also has the highest reported incidence of congenital, prenatal and neonatal adverse reactions (see http://www.psychdrugdangers.com/MothersAct.html)
The justification for selling this killer/deformer is that the profits are used to fund “good” research? I’m sure that logic will comfort parents whose babies died in the womb (65 miscarriages were attributed to the pregnant woman taking Paxil) or were born with debilitating birth defects or whose child contemplated or committed suicide.
Matthew Holford
Nathan wrote:
“Once again, much ado about nothing. Before long, pharmaceutical workers are not going to be allowed to volunteer their services in government agencies, watchdog agencies, sunday schools, or even animal shelters. Come on people… we in the pharma industry do have hearts too…”
Hmmm. I’ve not seen any evidence of that, to be honest, Nathan. Let’s see, what do we have?
We have (as near as possible in chronological order, according to the process): statistical shennanigans; apparently fraudulent use of KOLs; withholding of adverse events data; suppression of negative trials data; bullying of whistleblowers; and silence, above all, silence, when scrutinized over the above malfeasance. Moreover, the powers that be are conveniently finding nothing illegal in any of this, despite the consequences. Nathan, people are judged on their past behaviour, and I don’t see that GSK should be any different.
GSK has done all this, and has been rewarded by the Establishment for it. I find that grotesque, frankly.
Matt
Matthew Holford
Dr Sal Giorgianni wrote:
“…Thomas Edison? To Louis Pasture? To Madame Currie…”
The people you mention were driven by their curiosity, and a belief that what they were doing was right, and had a wider benefit. None of them, to my knowledge, tested drugs on unwitting trialists. Attempting to draw a parallel between these people, and the current crop of charlatans at GSK really doesn’t do you any favours, at all.
Matt
Matthew Holford
One last word from me, or rather from the Senate Finance Committee, quoted from its report, issued consequent to its investigation into Avandia, and the intimidation of Dr John Buse, by GSK executives, including Stout, Garnier and “Tacky” Yamada:
“Less than stellar.”
The quote of the millenium, thus far, and a delicious piece of understatement.
Matt
Nathan
One other thing: The term “executive vice president” is rather misleading. From what I can tell, this guy is a VP in the financial department. Go to GSK’s web site and you’ll find that this person isn’t listed amoung the top dozen executives. (http://www.gsk.com/about/executivebiographies.htm). Companies the size of GSK have dozens and dozens of “vice presidents”. They have a lot of control over the individual department they run (in this case finance), but very little control over the organization as a whole. You can be quite assured that this guy isn’t involved in making any decisions about clinical trials.
Matthew Holford
“…You can be quite assured that this guy isn’t involved in making any decisions about clinical trials.”
I’m not sure what the significance of this point is, Nathan? People have been harmed by GSK’s products, and thus, vicariously, by GSK itself. Are you really expecting anybody to be organizing street parties over the appointment of a GSK executive to a public body, such as Ofsted? It’s a slap in the face to those who have been impacted by Seroxat, for a start.
Look, government is unduly influenced in its policies by commerce and industry, as it is: the needs and wishes of commercial enterprises are already given significant weight, in the formulation of educational policy. In other words, what does industry want from its drones? OK, then that’s what we’ll have schools teach. We’ve already got Witty on the Business Council that (Gordon Brown) Texture (Like Sun) has set up to advise him. I’m sorry, but the ethos in place at GSK is not something I want introduced into any school my kids go to. I didn’t choose Witty, and I didn’t choose this guy, so I don’t have to accept a damn thing that they say. And I won’t.
Matt
Nathan
Matthew says: “It’s a slap in the face…”
Now I understand. It’s all crystal clear. There isn’t really any rational basis for your objection, you just feel slighted.
Matthew Holford
Nathan wrote:
“Now I understand…”
I doubt that sincerely. And kindly don’t tell me what my own experience, please, because that’s likely to rebound on you.
Matt
truthman30
Rational basis for objection Nathan?…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3454873.stm
“Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline knew that the anti-depressant Seroxat could not be proved to work on children in 1998, according to a leaked internal document”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/04/usa.highereducation
“UK firm tried HIV drug on orphans
GlaxoSmithKline embroiled in scandal in which babies and children were allegedly used as ‘laboratory animals’”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gsk-at-centre-of-russian-vaccine-scandal-443281.html
“GSK at centre of Russian vaccine scandal
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Wednesday, 4 April 2007
The pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has become embroiled in a vaccine-testing scandal in southern Russia after prosecutors set out criminal charges against three doctors involved in a trial of the company’s drugs.”
http://www.pharmj.com/Editorial/20040320/news/p344nurse.html
GSK reprimanded over medicines-review nurse
GlaxoSmithKline has been reprimanded over the actions of an asthma-audit nurse, sponsored by the company, who made unauthorised changes to a GP repeat prescription database.
The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority ruled that GSK had failed to uphold the high standards expected under its code of practice and ruled that the company had brought discredit upon and reduced confidence in the pharmaceutical industry. The case is reported in the PMCPA’s quarterly report.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/feb/09/health.nhs
Patients used as drug ‘guinea pigs’
Firms pay out millions to doctors to test medicines
Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday February 9, 2003
When Italia Sudano went for a check-up with her GP, Dr Robert Adams, she was in good health. Her husband had died a few months earlier and her blood pressure was a little high.
Yet nothing could have prepared Sudano, 72, for the nightmare that was to follow and the discovery of a trail of greed and fraud that went right to the heart of the medical profession.
She was astonished to discover that her trusted GP had been using her as a guinea pig by giving her tablets which had not been medically approved. Worse still, he was being paid to do so by a pharmaceutical company.
An investigation by The Observer has revealed that many doctors are risking their patients’ health by subjecting them to medical trials without their knowledge.
Sudano’s ordeal began when Adams took a blood test and asked her to return the next week. She had been living at Letchworth in Hertfordshire since arriving from Italy 50 years earlier and she trusted British doctors.
Over the next few weeks Adams asked Sudano to return for more blood tests. By the end of the second month her arms were black and blue. Her son, Joe, said they looked as though they had been slammed in a door. She said: ‘At one point I asked if he was selling my blood.’
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/news/cwglaxo.htm
TOXIC DRUGS ARE GOOD FOR YOU
By Robert Brack
Corporate Watch Spring 2000
This January, Glaxo Wellcome announced a merger with SmithKline Beecham. This will ensure its place as the biggest company in the UK, and one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, controlling approximately 7.4% of the market . Glaxo has exercised considerable power over health provision in the UK since the company was formed in 1929. But its behaviour has not always been in the best interests of those consuming its drugs. Robert Brack of the Myodil Action Group reports below how – for forty years – Glaxo knowingly sold a toxic drug to tens of thousands of people.
Between 1946 and 1988 Glaxo made and sold a spinal x-ray contrast medium called Myodil. Injected into the spinal canal in order to show up problems on x-rays, the drug was sold in approximately fifty countries including the UK. But Myodil, an oil-based yellow dye, was far from harmless itself – once injected into the spine it has been shown to cause a disease called Adhesive Arachnoiditis .
This causes chronic, intractable pain and is characterised by the inflammation of one of the three membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The inflammation results in thickening of the middle membrane, called the arachnoid, causing it to adhere to structures near it. Finally the spinal cord nerves clump against the inner membrane and impair the flow of the spinal fluid. The chronic pain which sufferers have to endure is caused by inflammation and nerve atrophy. There is no cure and no treatment. Accounts of the number of people who have developed Adhesive Arachnoiditis due to Myodil vary between different sources , but it is likely to be tens of thousands.
Glaxo must have known that Myodil was toxic when it was first released onto the market in 1946, since the company was under an obligation to gather reports of adverse reactions to its drugs. By that time many studies had already been published which showed this.
Glaxo Laboratories Limited was incorporated on 28th May 1929 to deal in pharmaceutical drugs, with only one director, Alec Nathan. Nathan formed the company when it was discovered that the dried baby food ‘Glaxo’ was the cause of rickets in children. The first product Glaxo Laboratories Ltd produced was therefore Ostelin, a vitamin D concentrate to replace vitamins that were destroyed in the food drying process.
Glaxo realised that to manufacture a medicinal product is one thing, to sell the manufactured product profitably was another. It had to have influence in the local health departments and infirmaries. Glaxo advertised its products through medical and nursing publications and by writing directly to a selected group of doctors. Sales of the company’s products grew and Glaxo, previously familiar to only a limited number of doctors, became more widely known. By targeting the people who prescribed Glaxo’s products it was able to sell to the Public Health Departments of a number of cities including Sheffield, Manchester and Birmingham. Sales of Nathan’s products steadily increased.
Nathan had another method of influencing the Public Health Authorities – this was through the appointment to Glaxo of a government chemist called Harry Jephcott.
This recruitment drive led to other employees from the Public Health Authorities joining Glaxo’s staff: a Mr Hunwicke from the Somerset County Public Health Laboratory, a Ms Allchorne and a Ms Findlayson from the government laboratory.
These staff officials naturally had connections and influence in the Public Health Departments. From this time on Glaxo was able to market its products from the inside.
The Second World War gave Nathan an opportunity to capitalise on the new recruits’ contacts and with government backing he set up a drug factory in Durham. By the end of the war his factories were producing 90% of the UK’s supply of new drugs.
Harry Jephcott became Chairman of Glaxo Laboratories Limited in 1946. He soon recognised that the new National Health Service, established in 1948, could be his single most profitable customer. Instead of having to influence the hundreds of different Public Health Departments scattered around the country he needed contacts within the new emerging bureaucracy to ensure that he became prominent in supplying the service with Glaxo’s drugs. He did this by targetting senior civil servants who were to run the Department of Health and Social Security from Whitehall.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/feb/14/iraq.oilandpetrol
irms accused of bribing Saddam to be investigated by fraud office
· British companies named in United Nations report
· Kickbacks ‘enabled Iraqi leader to amass $1.8bn’
David Leigh and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Wednesday February 14, 2007
Article history
The Serious Fraud Office has launched an investigation into allegations that a number of major UK-based firms paid bribes to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The firms being targeted include the drug giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly. The international oil traders and UK bridge-builders Mabey and Johnson are also to be investigated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3771429.stm
Glaxo sued for ‘drug claim fraud’
Glaxo is accused of withholding research information on Paxil
UK drugs group Glaxosmithkline (GSK) has been sued in the US for allegedly lying about the effectiveness and safety of its antidepressant Paxil.
New York state attorney general Eliot Spitzer filed the case at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The lawsuit claims GSK has deliberately witheld negative information on Paxil, which is also known as Seroxat.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/nov/22/pharmaceuticals.glaxosmithklinebusiness
GSK accused of trying to intimidate critic
· Senate to quiz former research chief over emails
· Case centres on safety fears around diabetes drug
Andrew Clark in New York
The Guardian, Thursday November 22, 2007
Article history
GlaxoSmithKline’s former scientific supremo has been summoned by a powerful congressional body to explain his role in the alleged intimidation of a scientist who criticised its diabetes drug, Avandia.
The Senate finance committee has asked Dr Tachi Yamada to describe the circumstances surrounding emails sent to Dr John Buse, a US academic who raised early concerns about an increased risk of heart attacks among patients on Avandia.
Japanese-born Yamada, who received an honorary knighthood in September, was GSK’s head of research and development until last year, when he left to head the Gates Foundation’s charitable efforts to fight disease in developing countries.
Congressmen are unhappy at how Britain’s biggest drug company handled the danger signals around Avandia, which was recently given a “black box” warning over its cardiovascular side effects. The Food and Drug Administration has suggested that it may have contributed to 83,000 heart attacks.
Shortly after Avandia was put on sale by GSK’s predecessor, SmithKline Beecham, in 1999, doubts were raised about its safety by Buse, a diabetes specialist at the University of North Carolina.
In internal emails, SmithKline executives dubbed him “the Avandia renegade” and discussed ways to quieten him. In a message copied to GSK’s chief executive, Jean-Pierre Garnier, Yamada volunteered to speak with an acquaintance who was Buse’s department chairman.
“I think there are two courses of action,” said Yamada’s email. “One is to sue him for knowingly defaming our product even after we had set him straight as to the facts - the other is to launch a well-planned offensive on behalf of Avandia.”
Buse says he was deluged by phone calls from company executives and pressured into signing a statement clarifying his remarks. He wrote to Yamada: “Please call off the dogs. I cannot remain civilised much longer under this kind of heat.”
In a report published last week, the Senate finance committee’s chairman, Max Baucus, said a “very disturbing series of events” surrounded Avandia. He suggested there could be wider problems with the relationship between drug companies and scientists, pointing to similar complaints of intimidation from a Stanford University professor who criticised Merck’s discredited arthritis drug, Vioxx.
Yamada has denied applying undue pressure, saying he was merely correcting inaccuracies in Buse’s public utterances. In an interview with Nature magazine, Yamada said: “I wouldn’t want the media to think it’s some diabolical plot hatched by me against Dr Buse, because nothing could be further from the truth.”
A GSK spokeswoman said the company stood by its efforts to correct “serious mis-statements” by Buse - but in a statement it agreed that communications had become “heated” and that “in hindsight, we agree that perhaps we could have handled interactions with Dr Buse better”. It added: “GSK understands that there is a fundamental difference between engaging in scientific debate to ensure the accuracy of public statements and trying to inappropriately influence or silence a critic.”
http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/rmr/?q=en/node/25493
GSK runs out of juice over Ribena claims
I don’t see any vitamin C in here…
By Tracey Cooper → More by this author
Published Tuesday 27th March 2007 12:01 GMT
Nail down your security priorities. Ask the experts and your peers at The Register Security Debate, September 24 2008.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), manufacturer of iconic English thirst-quencher Ribena, has been squeezed before an Auckland (NZ) court for misleading consumers about the levels of vitamin C in the local version of its blackcurrant drink.
The company admitted to the Auckland District Court that it misled customers about the vitamin C content contained in Ribena.
GSK also said it may have led consumers up the garden path in advertisements saying that blackcurrants in Ribena had four times the vitamin C of oranges.
Judge Phil Gittos fined GSK $217,500 for 15 breaches of the Fair Trading Act. The company also has to place corrective advertisements in New Zealand’s four largest regional newspapers outlining the exact vitamin C content of each of its Ribena products.
The charges, brought by the Commerce Commission, were the result of an investigation by two Auckland schoolgirls, then aged 14, who carried out the tests in 2004 as part of a school science project.
They tested the blackcurrant cordial against rival juices to find out which contained the most vitamin C.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OhcmaAf_zE
Lisa Van S
Michael Smith,
You forgot GSK’s Lyme Vaccine, it didn’t protect human health, it was pulled from the Market due to severe side effects.
Matthew Holford
Truthman wrote:
“Rational basis for objection Nathan?..”
Truthman, you should be ashamed of yourself. You forgot:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7386/413/a
and
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/328/7452/1333-a
Good ol’ GSK, eh? Just a few isolated examples. A few rotten apples: nothing to do with a culture of corruption, at all. Bless!
Matt
truthman30
The scary thing is Matt, these are only the cases which we know about and which were reported in the media, I shudder to think what doesn’t get reported and what doesn’t get coverage…
Matthew Holford
Yes, it certainly looks like a pattern of behaviour, which begs the question as to where that pattern emanates from. The top level of the Company? Who knows? But if it is a pattern, then it’s going to repeat itself.
Matt
truthman30
This pattern of behavior is rampant throughout the whole industry and has been for decades. It is not solely exclusive to GSK, as I am sure most are aware. But, it does seem that GSK has had more reports like these , ones where ethics and morality are thrown out the window in pursuit of profits. In the end it is not just the pharmaceutical industry which is being damaged by its own reputation, it is patients health and medicine in general..
It is a terrible shame that an industry which should be held up as a beacon of humanity indulges itself in this kind of abusive and damaging behavior..
pg
“Four-Score and Seven Years Ago if someone were to have come up with a product that would prevent the majority of a type of cancer from occurring they would have been heralded worldwide. Today those who did so are vilified. What an odd world. What a sad world.
What would the cynics have done to Thomas Edison? To Louis Pasture? To Madame Currie? And our time is enlightened time? Would anyone of these who profited from their hard work been rewarded or ostracized? ”
Dr Sal, do you have any thoughts on how people would have reacted Four-Score and Seven Years Ago if someone were to have come up with a product for children that very quickly proved to result in at least (at least as in the FDA themselves saying that only 10% of ADRs are reported)
6697 reported incidents + 2141 = 8838 (multiple incidents)
103 were considered life threatening
255 were hospitalized
3544 were taken to the ER
1236 had not recovered at the time of the report
159 are disabled at the time of the report
15 have died + 1 = 16 (multiple incident)?
pg
Given the FDA’s suggestion that only 10% of ADRs are reported, it has been estimated elsewhere that this could well mean that there are likely to have been in reality:
88,380 incidents
1,030 that would be considered life threatening
2,550 girls that would have been hospitalized
35,440 girls would have been taken to the ER
12,360 girls would not yet have recovered
1,590 girls who are currently disabled
160 girls who have died.
Teresa Cooper
In response to
Nathan, Dr Sal
Pharma’s have a conflict of interest not only in a childs welfare because many of their drugs target children and what we need to mention are the trials done on children without consent for starters and as your so informed can you please tell us how many children gave consent to trials used on them for the benefit of the pharma companies? How many children are capable of making any JUST decisions on their welfare because they are children? How many parents are drugs companies being sued by because they were not informed?
Please tell us all what Glaxo’s qualifications are in child welfare, educational welfare of children, child protection of children, child protection of looked after children (vunerable children in care), child abuse on looked after children within the system etc because this is very important.
Can you please also tell us why Glaxo were also apparently involved in Teenscreen via David Shaffer? And I quote from information all over the net from reputable websites
Mr Mills shared his interview with Dr Shaughnessy at the ICSPP conference, in which the Professor called TeenScreen “a program aimed at locating, identifying and procuring new customers for the mental health industry.”
He says TeenScreen is a creation of psychiatrist David Shaffer, a paid spokesman for Lilly and paid consultant for drug companies Hoffman la Roche, Wyeth and Glaxo. TeenScreen started out by claiming the program was free and required no government funding. But as it turns out, taxpayers are funding this marketing scheme from start to finish. Government money is being used to set up TeenScreen in schools all over the US and tax dollars are paying not only for the follow-up visits to prescribing shrinks but also for the majority of drugs prescribed”
The children labeled as a result of the teenscreen tests are alarming because of the drugs they inevitably end up on are drugs that are causing serious and widespread concerns, Ritalin, Xanax, Celexa, Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, Thorazine, Luvox and other similar drugs which are known by pharmaceutical companies to cause depression, violence, suicide and homocide.
————
If this is the case why should we trust Glaxo or any of its paid employees with the welfare of children given what is currently going on in the U.S and the fact they have no experience in a childs welfare nor education?
Can you also please explain wht GSK are also being sued not by just one family but hundreds of families and patients over withholding information on side affects of their drugs that have affected their children? Do you prefer dead children (side effects, suicidal etc) or do you prefer to protect them? If you prefer to protect them would you choose someone who has put children at risk to look after your own children? The answer is probably NO and if your answer is yes then you may be responsible for putting your child at risk and get a visit from social services for child abuse because thats what is.
You do not put children at risk with people/companies just to satisfy possible financial gain nor would you for example put a child with a known paedophile just because they were cheaper to get than a babysitter.
Please also answer me on this because this is also very important
Dr Perinpanayagam MS was a very respected man in the psychiatric industry and held senior positions, do tell me why as stated in news articles that he admitted to using CHEMO on the girls at Kendall House and he in fact had NO consent nor did the parents or girls he used them on know. He also overdosed the girls every day of the week more than the maximum dose of a male in prison on a crisis dose.
Can you and Dr sal please tell the world what the long term affects were on the girls when they were deliberatly overdosed with over 11 different psychiatric drugs some of which were extremely dangerous and never approved for the use on children?
Is this a looked after child’s purpose?
pg
Dr Sal - as Teresa Cooper has brought up the issues of both Zoloft and homicidality, and given your experience as Director of External Relations for Pfizer US Pharmaceuticals Group,
What is your opinion in regard to a zoloft trial participant being taken out of the study when displaying homicidal and suicidal ideation after only 11 days on that clinical trial?
More importantly perhaps, what is the general view of Pfizer ‘external relations’ as to why that participant was ‘externally’ said to have been dismissed from the trial for relatively minor side effects?
When you were editor of the Pfizer Journal, did you address issues such as these?
pg
Again, to Dr Sal:
Do you believe that 12 year old children and others who become homicidal on Zoloft should be imprisoned for decades and that all those who ‘externally’ and knowingly fail to disclose the homicidality-suicidality ADR link in trial participants should remain free?
Ruth
Blackburn/Ofsted/Glaxo. This disgusts me, and makes me think what Syd Taurel (Lilly Chairman) is up to on Bush’s Homeland Security Council. I shudder to think.
pg
Sal Giorgianni, Pfizer Guy:
Please could you answer the questions posed here? Thanks.