USA: Medicine for Diabetes Responsible for More Than 83,000 Deaths

english.pravda.ru...

Quote from source:
American authorities guarantee that the GlaxoSmithKline knew that the Avandia could provoke heart attacks

by Sara Sanz Pinto

BREAKING NEWS

Avandia, a drug often prescribed to patients with diabetes, may have caused millions of heart attacks around the world. This is the conclusion of a 334-page report submitted by the U.S. Senate on Saturday. According to the American authorities, the GlaxoSmith-Kline (GSK), pharmaceutical company that produces the drug, knew the risks to which patients were exposed, but always kept them hidden from the public. "GSK executives tried to intimidate independent researchers, using strategies to minimize or hide the findings that Avandia could increase cardiovascular risks and hid studies that were developing competing drugs with reduced risk," says the report.

"Americans have a right to know that there are serious health risks associated with Avandia and GlaxoSmithKline had a responsibility to tell them," said Democrat Max Baucus, U.S. Senator and chairman of the committee that conducted the study. "Patients rely on pharmaceutical companies for health and life, and GSK had abused that trust," he added. The report is also signed by Sen. Chuck Grasseley, leader of the Republicans on the committee that wants to withdraw the drug from the market.

The drugmaker denies all charges. "No study shows a statistically relevant correlation between Avandia and ischemic heart disease [disease that leads to narrowing of the coronary arteries] or myocardial infarction," stated the spokesman of the company, Nancy Pekarek, to CNN. "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revised the information and concluded that the drug should be in the market."

I thought I would post this as Diabetes is a big concern over here and many people take drugs for the condition.

Interesting article and good to see that big pharma once again tried to make people sicker than they originally were.

Sometimes it's embarrassing to say I am from this greedy culture.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Who is going to take a pill in which one of it's side effects is death? Your not going to be selling to many of those.

reply to post by ViperFoxBat


Look at the anti-depressants, there are a lot of side effects off of those and people still take those. They have been linked to suicide, so, technically that is a side effect of death, and still they remain a huge part of pharma.

Pred...

Antidepressants and cholesterol drugs have tons of side effects most people never realize. But I'm sure VZP will be here in just a flash to defend the big drug companies and the FDA and tell us how wonderful the system is and how the FDA and big pharma only care about helping you.

reply to post by Zosynspiracy


I don't understand how anyone can think the drugs companies are good. If profit was not an incentive then, possibly, the drug companies would be doing good things. But, as long as we have greed and profit as our drivers then we will always be used to increase revenue.

It just doesn't make sense to me and I don't get how the world doesn't realize that if drug companies are about money how would making us healthy be good for them? It won't and until drug companies are ran properly and not for the bottom line expect people to continuously get sicker and sicker. Very, very sad.

Pred..

Edited for speeling...

[edit on 24-2-2010 by predator0187]

As of late drug companies have been "selective" in sending clinical trials as evidence to the FDA during the approval process. Negative evidence now gets filtered and not sent to FDA, skewing the overall agency ruling on a certain drug.

At least 2 past editors for New England Journal of Medicine and 1 of JAMA have spoken out against the industry's policies.

For the antidepressant class, the latest book detailing the placebo effect and an argument against chemical imbalance is Irving Kirsch's "The Emperor's New Drugs : Exploding the Antidepressant Myth"

My husband is diabetic and I don't remember if he was ever on Avandia. I know he isn't now. When I first heard this news I rushed over to where his meds were and found he wasn't on that one. Man! Scary!

I was on Avandia for about a year and I had a heart attack about 4 years after I stopped taking it. The stuff did not work well for me and now I wonder if it contributed to my heart attack.