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Americans aren’t supposed to be guinea pigs or test subjects. But that’s the way they’re often treated by giant pharmaceutical corporations, which issue potentially defective drugs on the market and only then start proper testing.

That’s been the case with Actos, a drug for type-2 diabetes patients to increase control of blood sugar in their body. Actos’ creator, Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceuticals, got approval to sell the drug in July of 1999 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Actos entered the market later that year. (more…)

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Starting this week, drug companies aren’t getting their way on Facebook. They aren’t getting the cushy Facebook deal which had allowed them to block users’ ability to comment on their page “Walls.” Instead, they’re now open to criticism, and many are folding their tents instead of facing the music.

Facebook had given drug companies the privilege to block comments on their Walls in advance in order to get their business. But Facebook has changed its mind. Now drug companies, like anyone else, must have an open Wall where comments can appear when they’re made. (more…)

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GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is paying a $41 million fine for selling contaminated drugs all over the United States.

A GSK plant in Puerto Rico made the drugs  between 2001 and 2004. They include the anti–nausea drug Kytril, the antibiotic ointment Bactroban, the anti-depressant Paxil CR and the diabetes drug Avandamet. The plant where the contaminated drugs were made was closed in 2009.

In some cases, pills of different strengths were put in the same bottle. In others, pills of different types were packaged together.  And in some cases, the medications were simply contaminated. (more…)

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Sales of generic drugs could take an abrupt nose dive when frightened consumers start insisting on name brand pills when they get prescriptions filled.

That could be one result of a recent United States Supreme Court ruling against two women harmed by a generic drug. The ruling says victims do not have the right to sue a  generic pill’s manufacturer if warning labels on the drug are inadequate. It also says the manufacturers are protected from legal liability if they don’t strengthen the warning labels as new risks associated with the drugs develop. (more…)

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What’s one of the worst things a family can hear about their new baby? “Your baby has a birth defect.” Yet this too often happens in America, and not due to the luck of a genetic draw. Rather, it happens because large pharmaceutical companies place profits ahead of safety and sell defective drugs to unsuspecting Americans.

Two such drugs are seizure medications Depakote and Topamax. They can be used to fend off migraine headaches and epilepsy. But if taken while a woman is pregnant, especially during her first trimester, they can cause devastating and costly birth defect injuries.

What kinds of injuries? Consider spina bifida, in which the baby’s spinal canal and backbone do not close properly prior to birth. After Depakote use by a pregnant woman, her baby faces a risk 12 times higher than normal of suffering this birth defect.

(more…)

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Supermodel Paulina Porizkova wrote a thoughtful, intelligent, persuasive essay for today’s Huffington Post titled “Ending a Midlife Affair With Meds.” The med she mentioned was Lexapro, an antidepressant she started taking to fend off anxiety attacks at age 40.

The wife of musician Ric Ocasek (The Cars) and a former participant on Dancing With the Stars and America’s Next Top Model, Czech-born Porizkova indeed found solace. After several months of taking Lexapro, her anxiety and fears quieted. She also learned that many of her midlife female friends took antidepressants, too — too many, in fact. What was going on?

The trade-off for Porizkova was a malaise — a sense of not caring about anything. “I felt emotionally Botoxed,” she said. “What did I really feel like?” (more…)

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On last week’s episode of hit Fox TV series Glee, a psychiatrist played by Kathleen Quinlan counseled a patient played by Jayma Mays and prescribed an SSRI for her OCD. That is, she prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor for her obsessive compulsive disorder.

Though an SSRI might ease the OCD of Mays’ character, high school counselor Emma Pillsbury, it’s troublesome that the psychiatrist would prescribe it for a woman without first asking: “Are you pregnant, or do you expect to become pregnant soon?”

That’s because many SSRI drugs — though they may ease depression and anxiety — also may lead to serious birth defects for the offspring of women who take them during pregnancy. (more…)

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Many people believe America to be an over-prescribed nation. While many drugs are needed, many are not not — or they can do more harm than good.

In short, too many people take too many medications which make too much money for too many giant pharmaceutical companies. That includes antidepressant drugs which may or may not be needed by all of their millions of users.

But even when a drug does its job, as with antidepressant Zoloft, this may not be a good thing. That’s because there may be a trade-off. And in Zoloft’s case, that trade-off is risking a serious birth defect injury for newborn infant children whose mother took Zoloft during pregnancy.

Most likely such women didn’t know that the antidepressant could cause Zoloft birth defects. That’s because its manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., has not adequately warned potential users of such serious Zoloft side effects as heart, brain, gastrointestinal tract, lung and other vital organ injuries to babies whose mother takes the drug.

(more…)

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