Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Big Pharma routinely suppresses data from clinical trials...

... but FDA approves these dangerous drugs anyway!

Drug research, even from clinical trials sponsored by the federal government, is routinely suppressed, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), an international peer-reviewed medical publication. The study found that less than half of all NIH-funded clinical drug trials were published in a medical journal within two and a half years of the trial’s completion—with fully one-third of trial results remaining unpublished even four years after the trial. Why? Because the drug manufacturers didn’t like the data.

One example cited in the study was the FDA-approved diabetes drug Avandia, which in 2007 was found to increase heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths—even though the drug’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline, had known about the risk before the drug was approved. The BMJ study found that 35 of the drug’s 42 clinical studies had never been published, and were obtained only because a court case required the pharmaceutical company to turn over the data.

Not only does this irresponsible practice harm patients, it also increases healthcare costs. Eugene Carragee, a Stanford University orthopedic surgeon and editor-in-chief of the Spine Journal, spearheaded an unprecedented independent analysis showing that the medical device manufacturer Medtronic—not to mention a circle of orthopedic surgeons who received millions of dollars in royalties from the company—systematically failed to report serious complications with Medtronic’s bone-growth stimulating back surgery device known as Infuse. The results of a crucial clinical trial of the product were not published until nearly five years after the trial had to be halted because unwanted bone was growing around the spines of the trial volunteers. Full story...

Don't miss:
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  2. 70% of all doctors and nurses do not get the annual flu vaccine...
  3. Drug companies lavish free oversees trips and sports tickets on NHS bosses...
  4. 84% of doctors still sucking up to drug companies... 
  5. Anger over secret drug trials on Indian children...
  6. U.S. pharmaceutical companies testing drugs on India's poor...
  7. Pharmageddon: Prescription drugs are killing America's youth...
  8. 131 children vaccinated at gunpoint in Malawi. At gunpoint???
  9. Bill Gates in global push to vaccinate every child on the planet...

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