Sunday, 27 December 2015
the dark side of clinical trials
"In addition to price gouging, Big Pharma has been widely accused of hiding evidence that their drugs could cause potentially devastating side effects. In a recent series at the Huffington Post, journalist Steven Brill reported that one company, Johnson and Johnson, aggressively marketed an anti-psychotic drug called Risperdal to young patients, covering up an internal study that had found 5.5 percent of boys who took the drug developed large breasts. Hundreds of boys were affected, including one who developed a 46DD bust. J&J's deception was caught, and the company agreed to pay $6 billion in misconduct settlements. But the company probably isn't too concerned: Profits from Risperdal totaled $18 billion in the U.S. and $30 billion around the world. Avandia, a diabetes drug produced by GlaxoSmithKline, emerged from a 2006 trial with glowing reports about its effectiveness. Every author on that trial, it turns out, had received money from the company; four of them were actually company employees. But Glaxo's own research had found that Avandia could dramatically raise "bad" cholesterol levels — a revelation that one employee said in an internal email should never "see the light of day." Nine years later, Avandia is believed to have been responsible for up to 100,000 heart attacks."
from: The Week USA, December 2015
