Pharma's Political Money

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.php?cycle=2008&ind=H04

Cure! We Don't Need No Stinking Cure!!

This is from the New Yorker and can be found with many others at their cartoon site: http://www.cartoonbank.com/


Here is a comment about the cartoon from John Mack at http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/

"Are cures for high blood pressure, diabetes, Alzheimers, insomnia, etc. going to come from the drug industry? Not unless you believe that taking a pill every day for the rest of your life is a cure. What I'd like to have is a course of treatment for high blood pressure that involves two weeks of drug therapy and then no more high blood pressure for years or the rest of my life! You know, just like some of the first drugs ever developed: antibiotics!"

Why Free Samples Aren't So Free

This was published at the PharmaTimes site:

Free drug samples "can cost patients more:" US study
16 September 2008

Free drug samples which physicians receive from pharmaceutical manufacturers and then hand on to their patients may actually prove more expensive in the long term for people without health insurance, a new study finds.

The availability of free samples, which are only available for brand-name drugs, greatly impacts on whether an uninsured patient is given a prescription for a generic or a brand-name drug, it says......

........"Physicians and medical organizations need to ask themselves if samples are doing more harm than good," commented Dr Miller. "While doctors might intend to help someone by handing them a free sample, in the long run, it could cost them more. And removing samples from a practice can help doctors focus on which medication is best for a patient, rather than which medication happens to be available for free."

For the whole story click the links:



http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=14353&src=EWorldNews

http://snipurl.com/3r539

UT Researcher Added to Suspicious Behavior List

Here is an item from the Wall Street Journal about another researcher at a major university who did not disclosure significant payments from a pharma company:


Karen Wagner, a child psychiatrist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, is the latest academic psychiatrist to be criticized by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for failing to fully disclose drug industry ties.

Grassley said in a letter that Wagner didn't disclose more than $150,000 in consulting and speaking fees she received from GlaxoSmithKline in recent years, the WSJ reports. Wagner worked on an NIH study of the treatment of teenage depression that included Glaxo's antidepressant Paxil. Wagner didn't respond to the WSJ's requests for comment. The university said it would look into the alleged discrepancies.

CLICK LINK FOR MUCH MORE

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/09/11/sen-grassley-blasts-psychiatrist-for-failure-to-disclose-industry-funding/

http://snipurl.com/3pde2