How big is BIG Pharma?
Angela Bischcoff
Greenspiration
December 29, 2006
The package included:
? $82.3 million US in pension benefits.
? $77.9 million US in deferred compensation.
? Lump-sum severance of $11.9 million US.
? Stock grants worth $5.8 million US.
? $2.2 million US for 2005 bonus payments.
? $305,644 US for unused vacation time.
? $576,573 US for benefits he would have received had he stayed at the company.
From:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/who-goldenparachutes/
Ho, ho, ho!
Public Testimonies at FDA-SSRI-Suicidality Hearings, held Dec. 13, 2006
Herein find very brief summaries of the 60-plus speakers who presented at the FDA hearings on the association between SSRI's and suicidality/violence.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/419/28/
Here's a sampling:
- Joseph Glenmullen, psychiatrist at Harvard Student Health service, said that the FDA never did the promised gold standard study on suicidality and has swept the problem under the carpet for 15 years. He said that drug-induced suicidality was a distinct, easy-to-recognize phenomenon.
- Karen Menzies, lawyer, expressed astonishment that the FDA did not look at adverse effects, especially akathisia, in connection with sucidality. She stated that data were regularly hidden by the drug companies, and provided examples to the committee. She urged the committee to use its legal powers to ask for this data, but deplored that "You just don't!"
- Scott Gruder spoke of his father who killed himself 13 days after being prescribed Paxil. Deborah Gruder spoke of her husband and Scott's father, who loved life and whose suicide was completely unexpected. She shouted to committee members that antidepressant-induced suicides were "nothing but a blood bath and mass murder."
- Gwen Olsen spoke of her 20 year-old niece on antidepressants who self-immolated immediately after failing to hang herself. Olsen used to work as a pharmaceutical representative and discussed how she was trained to persuade doctors to prescribe drugs.
- Beverly Hatcher spoke of her mother with no history of depression who killed herself after 16 days on Paxil.
- Charles Carpenter broke down as he spoke of his wife who killed herself while on Paxil. A psychologist she consulted, because she occasionally "jumped in the car" recommended she take Paxil, which was then prescribed by her primary care doctor.
- Michelle Moore spoke of her husband who was "murdered." He committed suicide 1 day after being switched to Paxil from 30 days of Prozac. He was not depressed and had given no clue.
- Sarah Bostock's daughter Cecily killed herself (after 2 weeks) on Paxil. Bostock has set up http://www.SSRIstories.com, where over 1200 media stories on SSRI induced violence and suicide since 1998 are compiled and analyzed. She invited committee members to view this database.
- Angela Heck described the fear and ongoing bewildering consequences of an episode when her husband, in an antidepressant-induced dissociative episode, tried to kill her with a knife.
- John R. Hayes spoke for Eli Lilly and Company (makers of Prozac). He urged the panel to be rational.
Alicia Priest
Georgia Straight, Dec. 7, 2006
Do SSRI antidepressants lead to an increase in violent behaviour?
They are the kind of killings that would chill even a crime writer's blood. Not motivated by money or social gain, not spurred by revenge, jealousy, or long-repressed rage, these bizarre and brutal slayings are committed by seemingly average people against strangers, intimates, and themselves. Almost all are unprovoked. Many appear to come out of nowhere. They range from school shootings such as Columbine to incidents of parents drowning, suffocating, or shooting their children, and children stabbing, burning, or shooting their parents, grandparents, and siblings. They include suicides so unexpected that loved ones are stunned with disbelief.
Yet if some drug-awareness advocates, psychopharmacologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, judges, and juries are right, many are not random killings. The perpetrators have one thing in common: they took or were withdrawing from a class of antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The public knows these drugs by their brand names: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, and Luvox. The new antidepressants Effexor and Remeron, although not technically SSRIs, are close relatives.
In some ways, Canadians are very familiar with SSRIs. Though it's impossible to know exactly how many men, women, and children are taking them, we do know they are among the most frequently prescribed drugs in the world. According to pharmaceutical-information company IMS Health Canada, depression is the number two medical diagnosis in Canada. Almost 80 percent of patient visits to a doctor for depression results in a prescription, almost always for an SSRI.
Article continued here:
http://www.straight.com/article/chemical-imbalance
Zyprexa causes diabetes
A press release from PsychRights calls on Eli Lilly to restrict Zyprexa prescriptions to existing users.
Citing Lilly's own secret documents, Jim Gottstein, Esq. states, "It is now clear that Zyprexa has no benefits over other neuroleptics, while causing far more cases of diabetes than do other drugs in its class. This represents a massive health disaster, including at least thousands of past and inevitable future deaths."
The Lilly documents were the subject of four articles in The New York Times--two on the front page--as well as an editorial calling for Congressional Hearings:
Eli Lilly Said to Play Down Risk of Top Pill, December 17, 2006.
Drug Files Show Maker Promoted Unapproved Use, December 18, 2006.
Editorial, Playing Down the Risks of a Drug:
Internal documents offer persuasive evidence that Eli Lilly
engaged in questionable behavior to prop up its best-selling drug, December 19, 2006.
Court Orders Lawyer to Return Documents About an Eli Lilly Drug, December 20, 2006.
Disparity Emerges in Lilly Data on Schizophrenia Drug, December 21, 2006.
In a letter to Lilly's General Counsel, Robert Armitage, Jim Gottstein urged him to recommend to Lilly management to send a "Dear Doctor" letter advising them:
"Zyprexa should not be prescribed to anyone who is not already taking it."
Drug-induced health disasters are preventable. We need legal restraints to stop irresponsible pharmaceutical corporations from marketing drugs that kill rather than drugs that heal.
http://psychrights.org/pr/PsychRightsZyprexaDearDrMR.pdf
www.ahrp.org
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Eulogies for Tooker and Stories for a
healthy mind, body and planet
http://www.greenspiration.org
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Join our email list by emailing us at:
greenspiration@web.ca
Write "subscribe" in the subject line
and tell us what city/country you live in
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
____
Greenspiration mailing list
Greenspiration@list.web.net
http://list.web.net/lists/listinfo/greenspiration
Prometheus Institute does not endorse any article or comment that is published on PEJ.org. The opinions expressed in all articles and comments are those of the authors and not of Prometheus Institute or the Peace, Earth & Justice News.
