Paxil On Trial: Alison Bass
First Aired: 08-26-2009 -- 4 comments | Add comment
When GlaxoSmithKline was caught lying about the risks of its blockbuster anti-depressant Paxil, it set off ongoing investigations. How did New York state take on one of the world’s most powerful companies? Was NY Governor Eliot Spitzer driven out by his corporate enemies?
Pulitzer-nominated Boston Globe journalist Alison Bass, author of Side Effects: A Prosecutor, A Whistleblower, And A Bestselling Antidepressant On Trial, discusses legal battles to clean up drug company corruption, including pay-offs to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
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Paxil has two black box warnings on it. One for suicidal side effects caused by this drug and one because it causes birth defects. Why is it still in the market? They have no idea who is at risk but they certainly did know before they marketed
this drug that people died during their clinical trails as a result of suicide. They certainly did not do a clinical trail to determine this drug was safe to use during pregnancy.
By the time I was a few years into my extensive nin years of research on the relationship between hormone imbalances and the misdiagnosis of mental illnesses during and following pregnancy, I discovered the clinical trail process in this country is so utter corrupt that it is inconceivable that anyone takes the drugs.
The American Drug Cartel is fleecing the American public and if you thought what happened in the financial markets which tanked the economy in this country and around the world because of utter corruption and lack of regualtions it pales to the utter corruption that exists in the government funded, your tax dollars, research that is going on in every area of medicine and every university in this country because the Drug Lords have become so powerful they believe they are above the law.
One quick example, Pfizer was recently fined the largeswt criminal fine in history 2.3 billion dollars. Trust me when I tell you that this was barely a slap on the hand because I would be amazed if they had not made at least 15 billion on selling those drugs off market. Drugs that were not approved or had ever been studied for the conditions they market those drugs for.
I am going to emd with this bit of insight and remind every one who reads it to embrace the concept that nothing in this life happens by chance. In 2003, I had a conversation with the CFO of the largest drug company in the world. During the conversation he told me that drugs are development to treat the majority of the people and that the companies know that some people won’t do well on the drugs. He told me it cost $600 million to develop one drug. I asked him how he would feel if one of his kids died as a result of taking an antidepressant drug. He did not answer. I told him that all I had to do was educate woman, organize them and get them off the drugs. He told me that if I interfered wtih commerce I would be considered to be a terrorist.
i was on paxil between 1994 and 2004. i was going to join the lawsuit against GSK in 2002, but wound up not following through, a fact which i now regret. i am not sure if any of my information was eventually used in the ny attorney general’s lawsuit, as i was in contact with baum and hedlund.
Google “John Virapen” – interesting!
Europe: Back in the 1980ies Eli Lilly paid the researcher leading Läkemedelsverket’s, the Swedish FDA’s, approval committee for Prozac, John Virapen, 20,000 $. Subsequently, Prozac is approved almost immediately, although the studies showing Prozac to cause suicidal behavior in some cases previously had led the researchers to state serious concern regarding Prozac’s safety.
In 1988 Germany refuses to approve Zoloft because of its potential to cause suicidal behavior. Without further explanation, Zoloft is approved the year after anyway. The above mentioned Swedish researcher says there’s only one plausible explanation for Germany’s sudden change of mind: $$$
These two of numerous similar incidents are mentioned in particular in the German TV program Frontal 21: Gefährliche Nebenwirkungen verschwiegen? (Transcript, German), that aired on December 2nd, 2008, on the German TV station ZDF.