Monday, April 2, 2012

Drug companies kill

Pfizer (one of the biggest drug company's in the world and the one that brings you Lipitor for cholesterol lowering and Viagra to help with one of the side effects of Lipitor) and 5 of its executives are being sued for withholding information that lead to the death. Yes and they can still practice and sell drugs. Pfizer's current Vice President of Medical Affairs, will all face trial for allegedly concealing the unfavorable results of drug trials involving Celebrex and Bextra.
These companies are corrupt and we just allow it to go on believeing someone else will fix it.
All it requires for evil to thrive is that everyone stays silent (to paraphrase a quote).
We can no longer stay silent.

Vioxx® (rofecoxib) was a drug produced by Merck and Co. When it hit the market in 1999, it was very heavily advertised and pushed to all the medical professions. However, there was a problem: patients on doses higher than 25 milligrams were suffering heart attacks, strokes and arrhythmias. These were people with no prior conditions. In September 2004, the drug was removed from the market worldwide. An investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that the original trials conducted by Merck in 1998 showed this elevated risk, but the company chose to hide this evidence and continued with promotion and sales worldwide. In the United States, up until 2002 (three years after release), there had been 6,400 lawsuits filed against the company costing an estimated US$3.5 billion. This sparked the FDA to review its process of how it allowed drugs to make it to market. In the U.S., Vioxx® was estimated to have contributed to more than 120,000 premature deaths before it was removed from the market. In Australia, Vioxx® was conservatively estimated to be the cause of 300 deaths but more likely the number is in the thousands. But still it was ignored. For a drug that was on the market for just over five years, it had a substantial effect on many millions of people around the world and this was a result of Merck hiding the evidence of dangerous side effects. Despite withholding the evidence that the drug was killing people, the company is still manufacturing more drugs and still claiming that supplements don’t work. Can you believe this? Can you trust them? For that matter can you trust the regulators?

1 comment:

  1. Great article! Keep them coming - we need to be informed of these matters that we don't hear about in the paper, certainly not in the same proportion to which they occur. It is kept very low profile, so thanks for the warning Peter! No they can't be trusted and alot of us know that, but far, far too many people still are completely unaware and so they continue to get away with it! As more people wake up, this type of shameful deceit on mankind will cease and our families will be safe again. Yes, we have to hope and keep hope alive. Thanks Peter!

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