AL JAZEERA– Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux. Once upon a time, antipsychotics … Read More
RAW STORY– US authorities fined cosmetics and drugs giant Johnson & Johnson $70 million on Friday for bribing doctors in Europe and paying kickbacks for contracts under a UN relief program in Iraq. The Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission said since 1998 the firm had paid doctors and hospital administrators in Greece, Poland and Romania for contracts … Read More
DAILY MAIL– Drug companies manipulated the World Health Organisation into downgrading its definition of a pandemic so they could cash in on a swine flu outbreak, it is claimed. An inquiry heard yesterday that the WHO allegedly softened its criteria for declaring a H1N1 flu pandemic last spring – just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak. Critics said … Read More
TIMES OF INDIA– Even as questions are being raised about whether the swine flu scare was exaggerated to benefit pharma companies, evidence has surfaced that several members of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) vaccine board which pushed countries to buy the H1N1 vaccine have had significant ties with pharma companies. This fact, which is bound to raise issues of conflict … Read More
NEW YORK TIMES– In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects. Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of … Read More
