The FDA ’s approval of drugs like vioxx,meridian,bextra,accutane,crestor and serevent may be proof that something is serious wrong with and in the FDA.To add insult to injury the bush administration did everything that it could to limit the liability for damages done by these drugs.These drug aren’t sold to just liberals but to everybody.The bush family dynasty has done everything possible to insure the profits of the Pharmaceutical /bio tech industry even at the expense of the American people ,even if it causes death or injury to the public. The safety of genetically modified foods are questioned all over the world but in America the public doesn’t know what they are eating.The FDA is suppose to work in the interest of the American people but it looks like they are more concerned about the profits of drug companies.The family that some in America seem to be in love with, are the very ones who push the FDA to serve the drug companies interest and not the best interest of the American people .These drugs mention here have cost people their lives because of the conflict of interest at the FDA and an administration that ran interference for the approval process in favor of the drug companies.do you know anyone who has suffered because of these drugs ? Some of these drug do help patients conditions to get better but at what price ? There is no room at the FDA for special interest because lives are lost when things don’t go as they should in the approval process.
Snark ! we know all of that things you mentioned,There is a people process in drug approval not just the drug itself .Its people with special interest that I am talking about .People in gov. who have a conflict of interest ! it is that process that you seem not to understand !Some people died because of these drugs. Politicians who run interferance for drug companies to get drugs approved is wrong .because people are different, drug reactions in them will be different that is what makes testing so important !
Some politicians seem to want the FDA to be just a rubber stamp for drug companies.The FDA gets mad at its own scientist who question the approval of some of these drugs.This is the problem that I am talking about .
Dru: the newest thing you speak of has nothing to do with it .How many times have you had a perscriptions for a drug and when you got to the drug store you get the substitue for that drug ?via the insurance company !

It was reported that BP made 6 billion dollars in profit so far this year. And the cost of the oil spill so far has totaled about 0 million. Do fines even serve as punishment to corporations that make so much money? This often applies to pharmaceutical corporations, too. I remember that Pfizer was fined because of a drug named Bextra. The fines and lawsuits totaled up to about 1/6 of the money that Pfizer made in profit from the drug.
Pfizer was fined because it was pressuring its drug reps to push Bextra to the doctors at twice the dosage so they could bill Medicaid twice the amount even though they knew this would cause serious health problems in some patients.

I can’t tell you the number of times I see or hear about homeless guys here in Florida going to prison for something like stealing a belt from Wal-Mart. It’s pretty common here in Florida. Much of it has to do with the three strikes and your out laws. But on the other hand, there are hundreds of corporate criminals who live here in Florida. They have massive houses on the beach in A1A. And I know damn well all of them build their fortune by being a real stand up guy. I saw this one case on CNN just now about how Pfizer pretty much got away clean after they knew their drug called Bextra had killed numerous people. Also, the top management devised a system where their pharmaceutical reps would bribe doctors to prescribe much higher dosages of the drug. This was known by the company to be very dangerous to the patients who took it and some died. But the company did it in the name of profit. They simply could make a lot more money by billing Medicare and Medicaid for 40 mg of the drug than they could for billing 20 mg of the drug. The company was only fined three months of profits. Absolutely nobody went to prison or even jail. As part of the legal agreement, the company got the luxury of being able to deny any wrongdoing in the case. How can our justice system be blind if poor men go to prison for small crimes and rich men get no punishment for killing people?
typo- three strkies and your’re out law (not your)
typo- *strikes
typo- on Highway A1A (not in A1A)
*yet another typo- I know all of them DIDN’T build their fortunes by being stand up guys

CNN ran a good story about Pfizer a few weeks ago. It was titled "Too Big To Nail". Pfizer was pushing a drug they knew was harmful (Bextra). And then to make even more money from this harmful drug, they pushed their pharmaceutical reps to bribe doctors to double the dosage of the harmful drug. They figured they could make twice as much money by billing Medicare and Medicaid for 40 mg of the drug instead of 20 mg of the drug. All in the name of profit. Patients died as a result. Pfizer was only fined three moths of profit. None of the Pfizer management went to prison for murder. No CEO’s were imprisoned. So I ask you, is it ethical for a business to push a product they know will be harmful so they can make a profit to satisfy the shareholders? Is it ethical for the upper management of a corporation to push a dangerous product so they can have bigger salaries and bonuses? How are these CEO’s different from drug dealers on the street who sell harmful drugs to their customers?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+(RSS%3A+Top+Stories)

I can’t tell you the number of times I see or hear about homeless guys here in Florida going to prison for something like stealing a belt from Wal-Mart. It’s pretty common here in Florida. Much of it has to do with the three strikes and you’re out laws. But on the other hand, there are hundreds of corporate criminals who live here in Florida. They have massive houses on the beach on Highway A1A. Especially in Palm Beach. And I know damn well all of them didn’t build their fortune by being a real stand up guy. Cases such as the Bernie Madoff ( a part-time Florida resident) case are the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, guys like Madoff are either never caught or they get off with a light sentence or no sentence at all. I saw this one case on CNN just now about how Pfizer pretty much got away clean after they knew their drug called Bextra had killed numerous people. Also, the top management devised a system where their pharmaceutical reps would bribe doctors to prescribe much higher dosages of the drug. This was known by the company to be very dangerous to the patients who took it and some died. But the company did it in the name of profit. They simply could make a lot more money by billing Medicare and Medicaid for 40 mg of the drug than they could for billing 20 mg of the drug. The company was only fined three months of profits. Absolutely nobody went to prison or even jail. As part of the legal agreement, the company got the luxury of being able to deny any wrongdoing in the case. The whole thing is just sickening. How can our justice system be blind if poor men go to prison for small crimes and rich men get no punishment for killing people?

Is it different than the Vioxx Lawyer Pool. And all the lawers for Bextra get 33% on the gross payout.

Pfizer agrees to pay .3 billion in fines to settle allegations that it illegally marketed 13 drugs, including Bextra. It is the largest fine ever levied for fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches.aspx?post=1247520&_blg=1,1247520
Definition of reform: the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory.
How about let’s not argue sematics and agree that if the government saves money by stopping this kind of fraudulent activity, there will be more money to improve other aspects of health care.

Since it is not covered by the regular flu shot, it is still pretty much a brand new big pharmaceutical industry field. Big pharma seems to be getting as lot of negative publicity lately eg.
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The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex: A Deadly Fairy Tale

By Dr. Doug Henderson and Dr. Gary Null

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15758

Global Research, October 21, 2009
Progressive Radio Network - 2009-10-20

It has been a particularly bad month for the pharmaceutical industrial complex in its ongoing litigations in American courts. Among the main pharmaceutical headlines, Merck s Gardasil vaccine for HPV, now being widely administered to pre-teens, was found to be linked to amyltrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig s disease; following a .4 billion fine in promoting one of its blockbuster drugs Zyprexa off-label, deceptive correspondence was uncovered by Eli Lilly gaming the system again by promoting another one of its drugs, Cymbalta, off-label for fibromyalgia; AstraZeneca was fined 0 million for scamming the Medicaid system in Kentucky after being fined 5 million for ripping off Alabama; Glaxo lost a Pennsylvania trial for failing to warn doctors and pregnant women of the dangers of its antidepressant drug Paxil related to birth defects; and Pfizer scored a record-breaking fine of .3 billion for illegally marketing several drugs over the years: Bextra, Zyvox, Geodon and Lyrica. These kinds of charges, among the many others, have become a habit for drug makers for the past dozen years.

When we speak of the pharmaceutical industry complex, it does not refer solely to private drug manufacturers. The complex, like a Matrix that holds captive the health of the nation in medical slavery by its own design and manipulation, is a consortium, a spiders web woven with financial attachments throughout the medical profession. In addition to the pharmaceutical and medical device firms, this complex includes every government health agency the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and or course the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as well as drug lobbying firms now employing a large number of former Congresspersons, insurance and HMO companies, all of the leading professional medical associations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the majority of medical schools and their research departments who are heavily funded by drug money, many of the most prestigious medical journals, and ultimately all of this filtering downward to the physicians who diagnose our illnesses and prescribe our medications and treatments.

America is rightly regarded as having led much of the world in many qualitative innovations in all fields. That reputation is duly deserved. However, there is a new dynamic at work that is causing this reputation to be challenged. We are a nation that prides itself in our humanity, our sense of fairness, but today there is a growing concern that we are now being monikered as a country held hostage to a national security complex, which includes the largest military complex in the world, an obscenely expensive healthcare system and self-serving bureaucracies and private industries that serve their own financial ends. So it is not surprising that after spending this year .6 trillion on healthcare, we have such little health to show for it. There are second world countries where people live longer and healthier lives. And we have the worst healthcare among developed nations. So what have we received for our .6 trillion.

As the current healthcare debate continues to rage over in sundries the 0 billion net profit health insurance industry the entire deliberation over disease prevention and treatment has been overshadowed. And amidst this partisan and ideological anarchy, perpetuated by our elected officials, the media, and fueled by the pharmaceutical complex, two other areas America excels as a leader above all other developed nations is in being the premier breeding ground for the pharmaceutical industrial complex s greatest profits and, second, as the world s exemplar in medical fraud and corruption. The fairy tale of America s health as being best served by drugs is a creation of this complex, a lullaby that brings ill citizens repeatedly to their doctors and hospitals for diagnosis and treatment, or simply to deny healthcare altogether to the uninsured.

The country is pacified by a blind belief that the drugs being prescribed to them have been proven safe because our government health agencies have our physical health and well-being in their best intentions. This is a lie, an extraordinarily deadly lie. Iatrogenesis, medically induced injury and death, is the number one cause of death in Am

1.WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SUMMYY
2. WHY DOES HE PRONOUNCE FEEDBACK AS FEELBACK.
3.WHAT DOES BEXTRA MEAN?
4.WHY DOES HE ALWAYS SAY AAAAJJNUOOBOL?
5.WHY MOUNGI SLEEPS ALL THE TIMES?WHY IS MOUNGI HERE?WHAT IS MOUNGI’S PROBLEM
6.WHAT IS MUMMUM?
7.WHY IS PAANCH PRONOUNCED AS POUCH? WHAT IS HANG?
8. PLEASE DO NOT TELL HIM THAT I AM ASKING THIS QUESTION

Drug companies push new products really hard. Just before Prozac became available in generic form, meaning Eli Lilly and Company was losing its patent on it, they developed a slow release, once-a-week version so they could still market the drug (one of the most popular for depression) under a patent and make a mint on it. My doctor told me that the Eli Lilly reps offered all-expenses-paid trips to doctors who could successfully move patients from the daily (which was going generic, and thus quite inexpensive) to the new patented version. In his office, which is quite large, the "target" to get yourself a trip was successfully moving 100 patients over to the weekly product. I asked him if that was a challenge, and he said that in a large practice like his, it really isn’t. He’s one of the partners in the practice, and he said he could easily, with almost no effort, have moved that many patients to the weekly if he had wanted to. He didn’t want to, because he’s not convinced the mechanism is quite as effective at treating depression as a daily drug is. Despite that, other doctors in his practice pushed the new drug, and went on trips.

It seems drug companies are very interested in pushing their new drugs–new patients with prescriptions in hand mean money in their pockets. But there’s a catch with moving so fast. Here’s an example:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/vioxxsheartrisklingeredlongafteruseended

Different drug, same problem. Bextra was pushed so hard I had it offered to me for an amazing array of things. It was first offered to me for menstrual pain the month after it came on the market. It was offered again and again for various pains, and when my main pain problem was diagnosed as fibromyalgia, that was the only drug the rheumatologist would consider giving me. Luckily for me, it never worked for me, so I never took it for more than two weeks.

Which leads to my main question. Who is responsible for these drugs which can cause long term damage and problems? Is it the drug companies who are required to do testing before the FDA will approve the drug for patient use? Are they not being careful enough in their testing by not testing for long-term effects? Or is it the FDA, for not forcing more stringent testing requirements?

I have several friends who rode the Phen-Fen train, and ended up with heart damage. I have a friend whose mother had a debilitating stroke after taking Vioxx for just six months. And I know more than one person who attempted suicide as a teen after they were given second-generation depression drugs like Zoloft and Paxil. (One actually has a sibling who was given the same drug and did commit suicide.) Those drugs are now labeled as having increased risk for teens and kids.

So, who’s to blame? And what can consumers do when doctors are generally so eager to prescribe the newest medicines, which may not be safe?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thank you.