"Also known as Dewey, Cheatham & Howe"
Posted on 05/10/2007 7:40:46 AM PDT by Froufrou
The maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday to misleading the public about the drug's risk of addiction, a federal prosecutor and the company said.
Purdue Pharma L.P. and the executives will pay $634.5 million in fines, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said in the news release.
The plea comes two days after the Stamford, Conn.-based company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged physicians to overprescribe OxyContin.
"With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unkowing public," Brownlee said. "For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice."
what the f??
pay TO WHO???
and the sheeple blame the drug companies for high prices...
Arent these drugs ALL APPROVED BY THE FDA??? WHERE IS THEIR CULPABILITY??????
Assuming that OxyContin has a legitimate place in medical practice (Oncology,for one) it seems to me that it’s up to medical schools,medical journals and those chairing medical conferences/conventions to get the word out regarding exactly how this drug should and shouldn’t be used.
OxyContin ruined Rush and his show.......
They never did trials on the addictive nature of OxyContin. They used data from its predecessor which was the non-time release pills.
Didn’t help Kennedy all that much either. :)
Wow.
Which Kennedy?
There are so many possibilities..........
That was Patrick “i’m going votin’” Kennedy, I think.
That doesn't necessarily mean anything.As I implied earlier,physicians should view ads for a given drug with the same skepticism that "civilians" should have for ads about laundry detergent.
It's what's revealed in medical periodicals...e.g., NEJM,JAMA,The Lancet as well as specialty journals for oncologists,neurosurgeons,etc that should guide physicians in their prescribing decisions.So,for example,if the Archives of Internal Medicine,in an editorial,concludes that physicians practicing general internal medicine have no reason to prescribe Oxy then it doesn't matter how many ads such a physicians sees encouraging him to "prescribe Oxy for your headache patients.They'll thank you for it".
I know a bit about how this stuff works,having worked in an internationally recognized University medical center for 20+ years.
"Also known as Dewey, Cheatham & Howe"
All joking aside. Hearing loss is an extreme side effect of this drug. With these verdicts, Rush’s lawyers could make the case that his lost of hearing was due to his Oxicotin addiction. He could definitely recoup his medical expenses as well as pain and suffering.
This is false; the package insert and prescribing information are available to any and everyone, and EVERY WORD is OKd by the FDA. I would bet a million dollars that it has a clear, unambiguous warning in it about the possibility of addiction.
It is every bit as disingenuous as the lung cancer patients claiming they had no idea that cigarettes could cause lung cancer.
This is just another illegitimate government shakedown of a big business.
The unintended consequence will be that the patients who really need the drug will have a harder and harder time getting it.
And fewer and fewer physicians will prescribe it in the right quantities when it is really needed.
Some will just refuse to treat pain patients, or under-treat them, because of this.
They are approved by the FDA based in large part by information supplied by the drug company, detailing the results of clinical trials. If they’re caught deliberately lying to FDA, the fines are apparently quite high — commensurate with the profits in a case like this. Hopefully some of the money will go to people whose lives have been ruined by taking this stuff in reliance on Purdue’s deliberately misleading assurances. The FDA could certainly use an infusion of funds too, both to scrutinize drugs more carefully and to get control of the contaminated food import problem.
The government did not get rid of the Mafia, they replaced it with themselves.
Well these ‘RAT trial lawyers should now demand a public apology to Rush Limbaugh (with $$ compensation). Every liberal scumbag who made fun of his addiction to Oxycontin should be front and center apologizing to him and calling for financial compensation for him. I won’t hold my breath....
Oxy-contin is only a delivery system for Oxy-codone. it’s no different then two pills (or doses) of the same drug, or in patch form it would be the equivalent of four doses.
The only thing that caused a problem in the market was the abuse of the drug which had already been abused in every other delivery system from cooking the patches to snorting the individual pills!!!!
A few people died as a result of overdoses, and the delivery systems have nothing to do with the addictive nature of this sort of pain reliever.
I’ve been using it for 7 years. I require it to live a quasi normal existence. It is both physically and psychologically addictive, and I knew this going into the treatment, but there is nothing else that can help me avoid being bedridden.
The word addiction is misused. What I deal with is a dependency factor, not addiction. Addiction happens when you abuse a drug. If you use it beyond the time you need it, because you cannot break away from the dependency.
I want to make this perfectly clear! No person who uses this drug on a daily basis for more than six hours per day can possibly resist becoming dependent. This is the nature of the drug. you cannot avoid this. it is NOT a personal failure.
What you can do, is use the lowest possible dose that is still effective, and accept that you cannot eliminate all of the pain. If you try to eliminate all of the pain, the dose will gradually increase and it become very difficult to reduce the dose. You will suffer withdrawls and they are very uncomfortable. You cannot sleep, you cannot sit still, and you cannot do much of anything until you either take the drug, or check yourself into a treatment program to help you overcome it.
This is what happened to Rush. he got on the merrygoround of increasing his dose to eliminate more of the pain and got caught in the net. He developed the addictive behavior of denying the problem and did not control his own behavior to the degree necessary. he ignored the warnings and paid the price.
He did the only thing he could do, and that is to stop using it, because if he uses it again, He will go right back to where he was before with the dose. His particular medical problem has options that he should have used, rather than Oxycodone.
Human behavior is quite predictable, and nobody likes pain. A chronic pain patient must have a doctor who helps manage the dependency that is a given and will come with use of certain meds.., it is not optional.
Those who have a temporary situation must not use this class of meds beyond the time it is necessary, and for the shortest possible time at the lowest possible dose. If you do this, you will not have a dependency problem, but the dependency will come if you use the drug daily and beyond more than a couple weeks. It’s automatic, and unavoidable.
The businessmen did nothing wrong. The are scapegoats for someone else's mistakes.
I wish there was a pain reliever that did not have these problems. I would take it, no matter the cost. But there just is no other drug that works as well or as long and is relatively safe to the kidneys and liver..
If anyone reading this needs any further advice or help with the problems of Oxycodone dependency, I will be honored to help them in any way I can. I live with this every day of my life, and it’s is always front and center in my daily routines. I have developed ways of balancing my desire to live a relatively normal life with the personal cost of doing so. Pain is not a good thing and it hurts not only the patient, but those who are close to the patient. There are compromises that you must make and self discipline must be used every day.
This is a very important subject for anyone with a chronic medical condition. I can truthfully say, that without this drug, I cannot or would not want to continue. I would fold up like a cheap suit, 100% bedridden and unable to function.
Efforts to control access to this class of medication, and increased interference by law enforcement with Doctors treating chronic pain patients has affected the patients, and left them with fewer and fewer doctors who are willing to assist and treat them because of the legal risks. It has added a tremendous amount of cost into the price of the drug. This forces more and more people to self medicate and screw up with a variety of different substances.
This situation has become intolerable and mischaracterizations, accusations, law suits, and the like have resulted in only making the problems worse. I hope that through education, that we can keep this from affecting thousands and thousands of people with chronic pain problems who need drug therapy to maintain a relatively normal life.
Just my three cents.....
For the past seven years I have been taking four Hydrocodone at 7.5 and 500 milligrams acetaminophen daily for pain.As much as I hate taking it,if I do not,I become unable to function even daily chores.I asked the doctor why couldn’t he prescribe just one OxyContin per day instead.He said it was near impossible due to the mess created by the abusers.VA Hospital no less.
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