Roche Must Pay $18 Million to Two Former Accutane Users

Roche Holding AG must pay a total of $18 million in damages to two former users of its Accutane acne drug who blamed the medicine for their bowel disease, a New Jersey jury ruled.
Read article at bloomberg.com

Leukaemia drug treatment research compromised by drug company funding and authors with potential conflicts of interest?

Three Australian oncologists say cancer treatment research published in one of the world's most prestigious medical journals may have been compromised by a drug company that funded the study. They said publication of the research in The Lancet might have boosted the drug's perceived value to doctors and patients around the world, helping its manufacturer, Roche, make billions of dollars from the product.
Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

WHO reveals pandemic flu advisors with industry ties

Five of the 15 experts that advised the World Health Organisation about swine flu pandemic alerts had received support from the drugs industry, including for flu vaccine research, the WHO has revealed .
Read article at physorg.com
Comment by Dr Rath Foundation: The list of the WHO's influenza pandemic advisors with conflicts includes, amongst others, people with current and past grants and funding from GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Roche, Baxter, Sanofi Pasteur and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA).

PACE to hold hearings on 'falsified' swine flu pandemic

PACE is to hold hearings on pharmaceutical companies' possible influence on the global swine flu campaign and on the World Health Organization, a Russian daily reported. "The 47-nation Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is conducting an inquiry into an alleged conspiracy between the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry and scientists which could "expose millions of healthy people to the risk of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines," caused damage to public budgets and to health agencies' credibility, according to a PACE resolution. The motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of the health committee, former German lawmaker and a specialist in lung disease, who called the current pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century." WHO declared the pandemic in June 2009 on the advice of a group of experts many of whom are believed to have financial ties with pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, and benefited from the production of drugs and H1N1 vaccines."
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
Comment: Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has apparently said that Russia should withdraw from the WHO if the corruption suspicions are proven.

Free flights, meals and match tickets given to doctors by drug companies can damage patient care, say critics

Drug giants accused over doctors' perks
Article from the Guardian

Extracts:

"Drug companies are spending millions of pounds every year on all-expenses-paid trips to conferences around the world for doctors and other hospital staff, in what critics say is a massive marketing exercise dressed up as medical education.

The Guardian can reveal the scale of pharmaceutical company sponsorship following an examination of the registers of gifts and donations to doctors that all hospitals are required to keep. They show considerable largesse - from drug companies regularly picking up hefty bills for travel to international conferences in Europe, Asia and America, to specialist nurses' salaries, and weekly sandwich lunches for hospital staff training sessions.

All-expenses-paid trips to conferences in the US, Vietnam or Hungary are a regular feature of the registers, costing the companies up to £5,000 per doctor. Many of the declarations by doctors do not put a price on the trip. The total amounts received by staff at individual hospital trusts with complete registers are substantial - Sheffield's staff received funding of more than £105,000 from pharmaceutical and medical devices companies in the 12 months to last June.

Examples of the firms' hospitality include:

· Astra Zeneca paid £2,500 for a doctor at the Royal Bournemouth trust and £1,500 for a doctor at Sheffield teaching hospital to attend a cancer conference in Texas

· Sanofi-Aventis, the world's fourth biggest pharmaceutical company, paid for doctors at the Countess of Chester trust to go to conferences in Cape Town, New Orleans and Barcelona. At Gateshead trust, their reps gave a breakfast for 30 staff "to discuss drugs for the treatment of breast cancer". The trust's register records that "the donor was seeking to secure business".

· Roche spent £2,000 for an oncology consultant at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge to go to a conference in May last year.

· GSK, the biggest British pharmaceutical company, paid £1,200 for a consultant at Sheffield teaching hospital to attend the 11th international congress of Parkinson's disease and movement disorders in Turkey last June."

"Joe Collier, the recently retired professor of medicines policy at St George's hospital, London, a former member of the Medicines Commission and an adviser to the select committee, said: "Through its orchestrated campaigns affecting all those involved in the use of medicines, the pharmaceutical industry enormously influences what patients are prescribed. On the whole these influences are detrimental to best practice."

Payments to doctors are far from transparent. The Department of Health requires NHS trusts to compile registers of their medical staff's and directors' possible conflicts of interest and to make them available to the public. Only a minority do so. The Guardian requested the registers for 90 hospital trusts under freedom of information legislation. Only around a quarter returned data that included the names of the doctors and the sponsoring companies and the amounts of money received. Some refused to give any information at all.

Collier said this was unacceptable. "Declarations of interest are a key way to help break the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold. It is not a trivial issue. Public declarations by doctors are essential if prescribing is to be sensible and appropriate and according to patients' needs.""

"Labour MP Paul Flynn described as "codswallop" the companies' claim that their only intention was to help educate doctors. "It's not true. It's part of a huge marketing budget. It's all about maximising their profits, not helping people in life-threatening situations," he said. "The influence of these companies is enormous."

Doctors who receive funding believe they are not influenced by it. Robert Storey, a consultant cardiologist at Sheffield involved in drug trials, took four trips to conferences in the year to June 2007 courtesy of Astra Zeneca at a total cost of £12,000. However, he regards these as business trips because he is asked to disseminate research findings and are funded from the R&D budget. More junior doctors have their funding arranged through the drug rep and must fly economy class under Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) rules.

"If it is done through the local rep, who may expect some sort of favour in exchange for that sponsorship, there is more stringent regulation," said Dr Storey. "[Those doctors] are seeing reps on a regular basis and although it is explicitly stated in the ABPI rules that there shouldn't be any conflict or conditions [on the funding], it probably does influence doctors' behaviour because they are unsure whether they will get further sponsorship for going to further meetings, so it is useful to them to engender good relationships with different reps."

I personally regard most of these expenses-paid junkets as bribery.

Contaminated Aids drug, Viracept, recalled.

Contaminated Aids drug is recalled throughout Europe - Guardian

Extracts:

"An unprecedented emergency recall of all stocks of an Aids drug in the UK and the rest of Europe was ordered last night because the tablets contain a dangerously high level of a cancer-causing chemical.

All those taking the drug Viracept are being asked to see their doctor immediately so that they can be prescribed an alternative medicine.

Investigators are trying to find out what happened at the plant in Switzerland where Viracept is manufactured. It is understood that the contamination could have occurred in March and affected supplies of the drug for three months. That would mean large quantities of contaminated drugs have already been consumed."

"Roche, the Swiss manufacturers, said last night that some 550 people were on Viracept in the UK. It is one of the earlier antiretroviral drugs and most people who were on it will now have been switched to something newer. But there will still be many thousands on Viracept across Europe, particularly in less wealthy countries.

It is also widely used in Africa since campaigners fought a long battle in 2002 to persuade Roche to drop the price there. They succeeded in the following year."

"Roger Pebody, treatment adviser of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said that anybody taking the drug should not miss a dose, because it can lower the effectiveness of the virus suppression, but should contact their doctor immediately.

"It is essential that people who are taking it go to their doctor immediately in the next day and work out with their doctor the best way to proceed," he said. "That is putting people under a lot of pressure but you would not want to leave off one or two doses.""


Boost your body's natural defences against infection by cutting down on salt and salty food!

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

It is claimed in a report funded by Roche, the drug company, that Britain is falling down in its provision of drugs for cancer.

Britain is sick man of Europe for providing cancer drugs - Independent

Extract:

"British patients are being denied access to life-saving cancer drugs that are widely available in the rest of Europe and the developed world, according to a report.

The NHS's "penny-pinching" attitude to new treatments and "excessive bureaucracy" surrounding their assessment is condemning cancer sufferers in Britain to an early death, it says.

A review of the availability of 67 new cancer drugs in 25 countries has found that Britain languishes close to the bottom of the league. along with Poland, the Czech Republic, South Africa and New Zealand.

The authors, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, say research in the US, which has the highest use of new cancer drugs, has shown that new treatments have significantly increased the chances of surviving cancer.

A separate study of 20 countries showed that nearly a third of the improvement in cancer survival between 1995 and 2003 could be attributed to new drugs.

In Europe, the UK has the lowest survival rates and the lowest use of new drugs compared with the major Western countries of France, Spain, Germany and Italy. In all four countries, more than half of cancer patients were being treated with drugs launched since 1985, but in the UK only 40 per cent were.

The report, funded by the Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Roche, is an update of an earlier review published two years ago. Although Roche had no control of the report or its findings, the conclusions will help the drugs industry highlight inequalities in access to cancer drugs and so widen its market.

Paying for the new drugs, which cost up to £100,000 a year per patient, is putting pressure on health budgets in all countries. "

I consider it significant that the report was funded by a drug company...)o:

A non-drug way to reduce your risk of getting cancer is to minimise your intake of salt and salty food. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

Further extract:

"Cancer drugs

Herceptin (trastuzumab)
Breast cancer - approved by Nice in 2006 for use on the NHS.

Mabthera (rituximab)
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - approved in 2004.

Glivec (imatinib)
Chronic myeloid leukaemia - approved in 2003.

Erbitux (cetuximab)
Bowel cancer - refused approval in January 2007. Awaiting appraisal for head and neck cancer (expected June 2007).

Avastin (bevacizumab)
Bowel cancer - refused approval January 2007. Awaiting appraisal for lung cancer (expected January 2008), advanced breast cancer and advanced kidney cancer.

Tarceva (erlotinib)
Lung cancer - awaiting appraisal.

Sutent (sunitinib)
Kidney cancer - not referred for appraisal by Department of Health.

Nexavar (sorafenib)
Kidney cancer - awaiting referral by Department of Health for appraisal.

Velcade (bortezomib)
Multiple myeloma - awaiting appraisal. "

Reduce obesity, protruding stomach, red face, high blood pressure, pain, headache, fatigue, swollen feet and many other health problems by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Two child deaths after taking Roche anti-flu drug, Tamiflu (oseltamivir)

Flu drug warning after two child deaths

Extracts:

"The anti-flu drug that has been stockpiled by the Department of Health for a future epidemic has been given a new pack warning after reports of teenagers falling to their deaths from tower blocks.

It has been reported that two 14-year-olds in Japan died in separate incidents while taking the antiviral drug Tamiflu.

The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) says packets of the drug will include new advice to patients and doctors about "neuro-psychiatric" events.

The packets will say: "Convulsion, depressed levels of consciousness, abnormal behaviour, hallucinations and delirium have been reported during Tamiflu administration, leading in rare cases to accidental injury."

"The Department of Health has stockpiled 14 million doses of the drug - enough to treat a quarter of the population in an epidemic.

A spokesman from Roche said: "Following a recent review of the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir), the EMEA and CHMP have proposed wording in the precautions section of the European label to include an observed increase of neuro-psychiatric reports, mainly in Japan, in those patients being treated for influenza.

"As clinical studies have already shown, patients not treated with Tamiflu experience delirium and other events as a natural course of the infection and its associated high fever. The changes in labelling are a precautionary measure."

She said reports of neuro-psychiatric events in patients taking Tamiflu were rare and there was no established causal relationship between the drug and the likelihood of neuro-psychiatric events in influenza patients."

The drug company's spokesperson has adopted the same stance as years ago was taken by the drug companies about appalling adverse side-effects from taking tranquillisers, i.e. she seeks to blame the illness itself, rather than the drug, for what happened to these two children.

You can to some extent boost an impaired immune system by reducing the amount of salt you eat. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html - There are no adverse side-effects to cutting down on salt...

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)