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Three Harvard psychiatrists facing a US Senate inquiry got a vote of confidence from their hospital as "beloved and trusted by thousands of grateful children and families." Senator Charles Grassley is looking into the doctors' failure to report payments of more than a million dollars in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007. A memo from top officials at Massachusetts General Hospital obtained by the Globe praised Drs. Joseph Biederman, Timothy Wilens, and Thomas Spencer as "pioneers in the field of child mental health" while also endorsing "closely managed" collaboration with industry and promising a review of conflict-of-interest...

June 10, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Drug Resistance Is DeadlyPharmaceutical knock-offs may threaten our ability to treat malaria. By Roger Bate Thai government officials, led by commerce permanent secretary Siriphol Yodmuangcharoen, will meet with their Washington counterparts on June 10, hoping to persuade the U.S. Trade Representative to remove Thailand from its “Priority Watch List.” Thailand is one of nine countries listed, earning its place because of intellectual property-rights violations by the previous Bangkok government — which broke patents on AIDS and heart drugs, undermining its trade relationship with the U.S., and harming foreign investment. While the U.S. will continue...

The Walgreen Co, which operates Walgreens drug stores, has agreed to stop altering prescriptions without physician approval as part of a multi-state agreement to settle allegations of improper billing, according to Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper. Walgreens was accused of switching the dosage forms on three medications commonly prescribed for Medicaid patients without doctor approvals in order to boost profits. This resulted in Medicaid programs nationwide paying much more for the medications than they normally would have, according to a press release by the attorney general’s office. Walgreen Co. agreed to comply with state and federal laws on the matter,...

President Bush is asking Congress to work with his administration to end illegal sales of highly addictive prescription drugs on the Internet to stem a rising number of people dying of overdoses. Bush used his weekly radio address to highlight his administration's 2008 national drug control strategy, which the White House is releasing Saturday. The president said that while an estimated 860,000 fewer young people are using drugs today than in 2001, the abuse of prescription drugs is a growing problem. "Unfortunately, many young Americans do not understand how dangerous abusing medication can be, and in recent years, the number...

West Virginia replaces Tennessee as No. 1 in prescription drug useby The Associated Press Wednesday February 6, 2008 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- A report shows Tennessee has lost the top national ranking of per capita prescription drug use to West Virginia. The report by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee shows West Virginia took the lead, with 17.4 prescriptions per capita in 2006, compared with 16.9 prescriptions per person in Tennessee. The report uses data from drug company Novartis' most recent Pharmacy Benefit Report. Tennessee's rates dropped 6.6 percent from 18.1 prescriptions in 2004. The drug use rates remain well above...

Heath Ledger's death on Jan. 22 was due to an accidental mixture of prescription drugs, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York has concluded. "Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine," said an announcement released Wednesday morning by office spokesperson Ellen Borakove. Oxycodone is a pain medication, hydrocodone is a cough suppressant, diazepam is commonly called Valium, temazepam treats anxiety or sleeplessness, alprazolam is known as Xanax, and doxylamine is a sedating antihistamine.

favorite target of some politicians has always been the Pharmaceutical Industry. Every year there are stories and speeches by candidates for President or Congress about how drugs cost too much (gives you insight into their desire for price controls, which would destroy research and development of new drugs, by the way) and promises by candidates that they will “Stand up to the drug industry,” to paraphrase Hillary Clinton from the debate last Saturday night. Well, those evil bastards are at it again, this time finding a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. A pilot study carried out by U.S. researchers found...

John McCain on Saturday said he wants to again allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada as a way to bring health care costs under control. By Associated Press CANAAN, Vt. - Republican presidential contender John McCain on Saturday said he wants to again allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada as a way to bring health care costs under control.

Counterfeit prescription drugs are a $35 billion-a-year business, and it's growing; by some estimates, 50 percent of prescription drugs in Africa, including those used to treat AIDS and malaria, are fake. Americans have long considered themselves immune, but a huge proportion of the prescription medications and devices used in the United States are now manufactured overseas, and the risks are escalating for Americans, too. It's no surprise; last year alone Americans spent $275 billion on their prescriptions. Consider: • Last fall, counterfeit diabetes test strips from China flooded the U.S. market. The fake blood glucose monitoring strips first came to...

CAPE CORAL - Publix supermarket chain said today it will make seven common prescription antibiotics available for free, joining other major retailers in trying to lure customers to their stores with cheap medications. The oral antibiotics, representing the most commonly filled at the chain's pharmacies, will be available at no cost to anyone with a prescription as often as they need them, Publix CEO Charlie Jenkins Jr. said. Fourteen-day supplies of the seven drugs will be available at all 684 of the chain's pharmacies in five Southern states. The prescription antibiotics available under the program are amoxicillin, cephalexin, penicillin VK,...

For Immediate Release Media review copies and interviews available on request Contact: Fred Baughman, MD fredbaughmanmd@cox.net Author: The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=9628 Is your child taking Ritalin? Is there a plague of psychiatric diseases in children? This is a true story. On March 21, 2000, fourteen-year old Matthew Smith was having a good time skateboarding with two of his cousins. Suddenly, he collapsed to the floor and started turning blue. His cousins called 911 but the paramedics couldn’t revive him. At the hospital he was pronounced dead from a heart attack – a heart...

Is it safe? Nobody knows.More and more, parents at wit's end are begging doctors to help them calm their aggressive children or control their kids with ADHD. More and more, doctors are prescribing powerful antipsychotic drugs. In the past seven years, the number of Florida children prescribed such drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year, more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs. Even children as young as 3 years old. Last year, 1,100 Medicaid children under 6 were prescribed antipsychotics, a practice so risky that state regulators say it should be used only...

Source: Temple University Date: July 17, 2007 Combating Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals From China Science Daily — Agencies worldwide are cracking down on counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and much of the focus has been on China, where an official was recently executed for approving fake medicines. While most of these drugs reach consumers through online or illegal suppliers, there's a growing threat to outlets considered more safe, like the neighborhood pharmacy, said Temple University pharmacoeconomist, Albert Wertheimer, Ph.D., who will talk about combating counterfeit pharmaceuticals coming out of China at a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seminar on July 23 and 24 in...

The European Commission has released figures showing that there has been a dramatic and concerning increase in pharmaceutical counterfeiting, with seizures in Europe hitting an all time high of over 2.5m items. 2005 only saw seizures totalling around half a million items, but the figures for 2006 have revealed a hefty increase, causing concern at the European Commission due the potential health and safety risks associated with fake pharmaceuticals. The most popular targets for counterfeiters over 2006 were Pfizer's blockbuster drug Viagra (sildenafil citrate), Eli Lilly's Cialis (tadalafil) and Bayer's Levitra (vardenafil) - all products for the treatment of erectile...

I've always been interested in the topic of prescription drug laws because -- even more than laws which prohibit adults from using recreational drugs -- it seems absolutely unjustifiable for the government to prevent adult citizens from deciding for themselves which pharmaceutical products they want to use. Put another way, it seems unfathomable that competent adults are first required to obtain the "permission" of a doctor before being "allowed" to obtain and consume the medications they think they need -- and that they are committing crimes if they do not first obtain that permission (or, worse, if they try to...

WASHINGTON - The use of drugs to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, has more than tripled worldwide since 1993, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. And spending on such drugs rose ninefold between 1993 and 2003, the team at the University of California, Berkeley reported. "ADHD could become the leading childhood disorder treated with medications across the globe," Richard Scheffler, an expert in health economics and public policy who led the study, said in a statement. Story continues below ↓advertisement "We can expect that the already burgeoning global costs for medication treatment for ADHD will rise even more sharply over the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration defended the Medicare prescription drug benefit program on Monday as being cheaper than initially forecast, challenging the U.S. government's top accountant who called it "fiscally irresponsible." "Over 90 percent (of Medicare recipients) are covered and the program costs are much less than what experts predicted when the bill was enacted in 2004," said Leslie Norwalk, acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the Health and Human Services Department. Medicare is the federal health insurance program covering 42 million elderly and disabled Americans. The program was expanded last year...

The U.S. government's top accountant says the law that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare may be the most financially irresponsible legislation passed since the 1960s. U.S. Comptroller General David Walker says Medicare -- barring vast reform to the program and the nation's healthcare system -- is already on course to possibly bankrupt the treasury and adding the prescription bill just makes the situation worse. Walker appears in a Steve Kroft report to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, March 4 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. "The prescription drug bill is probably the most fiscally irresponsible...

Pfizer Inc. said Monday it will cut 10,000 jobs by the end of 2008 and close some plants in an effort to reduce costs by $2 billion a year. The plan calls for the closure of three research sites and two manufacturing sites, and for the European sales force to be reduced by 20%. (Read the full text of Pfizer's statement.) Earlier, the company reported that its fourth-quarter net income more than tripled on a gain from the sale of its consumer health-care unit to Johnson & Johnson. However, the New York company's preferred measure of performance, adjusted earnings, fell...

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs. Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but...