Filed in Category Pediatric News
see the Dept. of Justice press release
“United States Files Complaint Against Forest Laboratories for Allegedly Violating the False Claims Act, Pharmaceutical Company Allegedly Marketed Drugs for Unapproved Pediatric Use and Paid Kickbacks”http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/Februar…
to quote 1st paragraph:
“WASHINGTON – A Complaint was unsealed today in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts against a New York pharmaceutical company for alleged False Claims Act violations arising from the company’s marketing the drugs Celexa and Lexapro for unapproved pediatric use and for paying kickbacks to induce physicians to prescribe the drugs.”
and the news of the FDA approval:
“The Corruption Continues: FDA Approves Antidepressants for Children, Even After Revelations of Bribery ”
see dubya dubya dubya dot natural dot news dot com
To quote in part:
“(NaturalNews) The FDA has approved Forest Laboratories’ antidepressant Lexapro (escitalopram) for use in children and adolescents, even as the federal government and 11 states have filed a lawsuit against the company for illegally pushing the drug on kids.
The federal government has accused Forest of bribing pediatricians to prescribe Lexapro and a related drug, Celexa (citalopram), to treat depression in children, even though such use had not been approved by the FDA at the time. The government also claims that Forest concealed the results of studies showing the drugs to be no more effective than a placebo.”
“By knowingly and actively promoting these antidepressants for off-label pediatric use without disclosing the results of the negative pediatric study and by paying kickbacks, Forest caused false claims to be submitted to federal health care programs in violation of the False Claims Act,” said the federal complaint, issued on Feb. 25.
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4 Comments so far
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How Can This Happen: Fda Approves Psychiatric Drug For Children While Govt. Investigates Corruption?
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the FDA should ban psychiatric drugs for children.
Perhaps there should be an investigation of the FDA approval process, any conflicts of interest like stock ownership, and whether there were any big deposits in the bank accounts of FDA officials.
Should patients have to gamble that their doctors are diligent enough to read the research and not prescribe drugs which they don’t trust? Most doctors are not likely to do that.
Lexapro is from the DEVIL. It ruined my life. Those people pushing it belong in prison, if they need space for them they should release some crack dealers as they are not as big a harm to society.
How it happens is complicated, even Byzantine. Begin with the fact that the vast majority of pharmaceutical research is funded by the company trying to market a drug. There simply is no alternative funding for studies to be done without the potential of bias. To avoid the possibility of money interfering with science would mean that development of new drugs would come to a screeching halt. Also, if a doctor is going to spend a good deal of time doing research and going to meetings, it isn’t unreasonable that he should be paid, or fed a meal at the meetings. Whether that constitutes a bribe is a close judgment.
Drug companies do tend to have a really annoying tendency not to publish inconclusive studies while trumping those that show positive results, even when the positives are not statistically robust. There’s really no counter except in the skepticism of the prescribing physician. That’s one reason doctors spend a lot more time than people generally realize in reading professional journals, going to meetings, and talking with colleagues.