How Pharma Giants Are Getting Rich By Calling Our Life Problems 'Medical Disorders'

via AlterNet:



How Pharma Giants Are Getting Rich By Calling Our Life Problems 'Medical Disorders'

By Eugenia Tsao, CounterPunch. Posted August 21, 2009.

Pharma companies have waded into helping us with life problems far beyond the biological -- they claim to cure our social maladies.



Some years ago, a friend told me that he had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and that his psychiatrist had given him a prescription for Forest Laboratories’ popular SSRI antidepressant Celexa (chemical name, citalopram hydrobromide; $1.5 billion in sales in 2003). Knowing him to be a vociferous critic of the pharmaceutical companies, I asked whether he agreed that the origins of his unhappiness were biological in nature. He replied that he unequivocally did not. “But,” he confided, “now I might be able to get my grades back up.”

This guy was, at the time, a full-time undergraduate student who managed rent, groceries and tuition only by working two part-time jobs. He awoke before dawn each morning in order to transcribe interviews for a local graduate student, then embarked upon an hour-long commute to campus, attended classes until late afternoon, and then finally headed over to a nearby café to wash dishes until nine o’clock in the evening. By the time he arrived home each night, he was too exhausted to work on the sundry assignments, essays and lab reports that populated his course syllabi. As the school year dragged on, he had become increasingly disheartened about his slipping grades and mounting fatigue and decided, finally, that something had to be done. So he’d seen the psychiatrist and was now on Celexa.

It is worth reflecting on this anecdote, and others like it, as research proceeds on the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), a draft of which is slated for release in late 2009. When perceived through the aseptic lens of statistics, diagnostic rates, and other seemingly objective metrics, the urgency with which companies like Pfizer exhort us to monitor ourselves for sadness or restlessness and to “ask your doctor if Zoloft is right for you” assumes a superficially unproblematic aspect. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over 17 million American adults are afflicted with clinical depression each year, costing the national economy $30 billion in absenteeism, inefficiency and medical expenses. Eighty per cent of those afflicted will never seek psychiatric treatment, despite the American Psychiatric Association’s regular reassurances that 80-90 per cent of chronic depression cases can be successfully treated, and 15 per cent will attempt suicide. Suicide is, indeed, the third leading cause of death among American youth aged 10 to 24. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142111/how_pharma_giants_are_getting_rich_by_calling_our_life_problems_%27medical_disorders%27/

Meanwhile, people with real medical problems are going bankrupt because of their price gouging.

I'm learning. I'll let you know how treatment goes.

better served (by yourself) to learn first and treat later if you still think its the best option?

Edit for 10th rec!

We cannot medicate ourselves to accept the fact that our personal circumstances, as set up by the rest of the world, suck. That way lies madness.

Instead, we have to eke out a sustainable existence, then fight like hell to overturn the complacency that values things over people, corporations over individuals, and money over everything else.

can also be used for cosmetic or recreational purposes. However

Positron emission tomography imaging—the injection of small amounts of radioactive material into the body, which then give off gamma rays that are detected by a special gamma camera—produces images that illuminate the structure and function of internal organs. Using evidence from PET scans, NYSPI researchers are building a new body of knowledge surrounding depression, while dispelling common misconceptions of the disease’s cause.

“For years people have said that depression or mood disorders are a chemical imbalance in the brain,” NYSPI Chief of the Department of Neuroscience John Mann, M.D., said. “Now we have a large imaging center here on the medical campus and we’re actually able to image brain neurotransmitter systems in patients. Now we’ve shown unequivocal evidence of neurotransmitter abnormalities in bipolar disorder and in major depression, and we’ve shown how these abnormalities can have an impact on the probability of patients responding to different types of treatment.”

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/04/29/state-institute-pioneers-depression-findings-pet-scan-research

Bloomberg reports a U.S. District Court Judge has allowed law suits to move forward against Eli Lilly, the drug company is accused of selling and encouraging physicians to prescribe the drug Zyprexa for uses never proven or approved by the FDA. It’s called off-labeling; it is used to goose profits by expanding a drug's target population by pushing its effectiveness against symptoms rather than illness.

In 1995, clinical trials of Zyprexa showed that the drug was ineffective in treating dementia in older patients. The only FDA-approved use of Zyprexa is in the treatment of schizophrenia, and that would have relegated Zyprexa to the backwaters of the pharmaceutical rivers. In the seven studies Lilly presented to the FDA, it was shown the Zyprexa had absolutely no benefit whatsoever in the treatment of dementia or Alzheimer’s.

But hey, this is America; it's all just a matter of marketing. We have wars to keep you safe from people who live in mud huts. And campaigns to keep a Muslim country from getting nuclear power when it’s surrounded by countries that do have nuclear power. It’s not what they do; it's what we say they will do.

Last year Zyprexa was Lilly’s most profitable drug, racking up $4.7 billion in sales. God bless America, only in America (patriotic music here) could a drug totally ineffective at what it is being prescribed for become number one in sales!

The judge released 10,000 pages of documents that tell a tale of for-profit medicine as cold and calculating as robbing the fillings from a corpse. Revealed was a 2002 business plan encouraging sales reps to press doctors to prescribe the drug to elderly patients for insomnia and mood swings. Ironically, one of the suggested symptoms to treat was suspicion.

Lilly marketed the drug to primary care physicians and long-term care facilities. Ever seeking to expand the market they added the treatment to post traumatic stress disorder and sleep difficulties. By 2006 Lilly executives were rolling in cash and the company's goal was $6 billion in sales. In 2002, Lilly researcher Peter Feldman sent E-mails to his boss Denice Torres, the company's global marketing director.

He said that they were going to stop studying Zyprexa’s potential health benefits for elderly consumers. That would risk “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs to save on poultry feed costs,” Feldman said in the unsealed messages.

Ha ha, nothing better than a comic researcher, is there? Except maybe an all-business marketing director. “Elderly remains an important aspect of target PT and affiliate focus,” Torres answered in the message.

“For two consecutive years, you have been on top and have turned in above-plan performance,” Grady Grant, Lilly’s national sales director, wrote to his salespeople in the newsletter.

“Once again you have all shown that (LTC) long term care is a driving force for Zyprexa in the US affiliate in 2002,” Mike Murray, another Lilly executive, wrote in the newsletter. “We must continue to accelerate the growth of Zyprexa.”

A nice pat on the head from the boss man and fat sales commissions can do wonders for sales

One sales representative wrote in a March 7, 2003, note that she’d persuaded a doctor to write Zyprexa prescriptions for use in “elderly pts, help sleep and irritability.” Another asked a doctor to try Zyprexa “in elderly who are not thinking clearly and are suspicious and hostile,” according to an Aug. 31, 2001, note.

Only in America could not thinking clearly and being suspicious and hostile be considered a symptom! Using that logic you could drug most of this society. But were this just a case of selling sugar pills to Granny and Boom Pa it could be forgiven. America’s shelves are full of medicines and pseudo medicines and treatments and supplements that at best might help a little, and at worst might deplete your wallet. But Zyprexa kills. Deaths for those taking Zyprexa were “significantly greater than placebo-treated patients (3.5 percent v. 1.5 percent, respectively).”

Now take $4.7 billion in annual sales and do the death math. But hey, they were making money, right? So who goes to jail? Go to jail? Why, nobody's going to jail, now or ever! This isn’t about wild-eyed extremists filled with hate and rage answering God’s call to kill. This is about nice capitalists in nice three-piece suits and ties killing the elderly for fun and profit. Illegally and immorally pushing a drug knowing full well in advance that it was dangerous and without any benefit to the patient.

Jail? No, this is America; we just want our money back. Only bad men, extremists and wild-eyed fanatics go to jail.

Lilly has already paid out $1.2 billion for 32,000 individual claims; the company faces further lawsuits by twelve states seeking damages. The company agreed in January to pay $1.4 billion to thirty states and this total included a $615 million fine levied by the federal government. Damages from pending lawsuits could reach another $6.8 billion, but with sales of $4 billion a year for seven years there is little monetary loss for the company.

““Plaintiffs are releasing one-sided, cherry-picked documents obtained in discovery to selected news media in an effort to try their cases in the media,” said Lilly spokeswoman Marni Lemons, who added that the company will fight the lawsuit.

From a Lily sales memo from 2001: “With most customers, we will continue to address the diabetes concern only when it arises. Get back to selling!”

Go to jail? Don’t be ridiculous, no one is going to jail. Only bad men, extremists and wild-eyed fanatics go to jail. This is just doing business in America.

I knew the end was near.