Category Archives: Prescription Drug Claims

Med Schools Flunk at Keeping Faculty Off Pharmaceutical Speaking Circuit

Written On December 29, 2010 By Bob Kraft

I’ve written several times about pharmaceutical companies paying doctors to shill for them. Speak-for-fee has gotten enough bad publicity recently that fewer doctors are accepting money from the drug companies to tout certain medications.
But, as a lengthy article at the ProPublica site details, medical schools are falling behind physicians in general in reining in this [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims, Product Liability or Medical Devices

Darvon and Darvocet Painkillers Pulled From U.S. Market

Written On December 20, 2010 By Bob Kraft

Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals Inc., the manufacturer of the painkillers Darvon and Darvocet has agreed to stop marketing those drugs in the Untied State. A new study has linked Darvon and Darvocet to serious and sometimes fatal heart rhythm abnormalities.
This action was taken at the request of the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA also asked makers of generic [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

Doctors Disciplined by Texas Medical Board Still Earn Money from Drug Firms

Written On December 13, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The drug companies never cease to amaze me. When they can’t find reputable doctors to tout their products, they hire doctors who have been disciplined by the Texas Medical Board. This behavior was documented in a recent article in the Dallas Morning News. You should read the entire article, but here are excerpts:
The 33-year-old woman [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

Patient Care Compromised by Drug Makers’ Price Inflation Scheme

Written On December 9, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The AP (12/7, Caldwell) reported Abbot Laboratories Inc., B. Braun Medical Inc., and Roxane Laboratories Inc. “agreed to pay more than $421 million to settle allegations that the companies reported inflated prices for numerous products,” according to the Justice Department. Assistant Attorney General Tony West said the companies “inflated the average wholesale price for dozens [...]

Posted in Medicaid, Medicare, Prescription Drug Claims, Product Liability or Medical Devices

When Drugs Cause Problems They Are Supposed to Prevent

Written On November 4, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The New York Times ran a news analysis recently that discussed the increasingly common situation in which drugs designed to prevent a medical condition actually cause the condition. Here are excerpts:
One is bisphosphonates, which is widely used to prevent the fractures, especially of the hip and spine, that are common in people with osteoporosis. Those [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

Glaxo Agrees to Pay $750 Million to Settle Defective Drug Suit

Written On October 28, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The CBS Evening News reported, “Glaxo-Smith-Kline agreed to pay $750 million to settle a case involving defective drugs, including the anti-depressant Paxil [paroxetine].”
NBC Nightly News reported pointed out that company “admits it sold drugs of questionable safety made at a huge plant in Puerto Rico.” It “now admits some were mislabeled in wrong packages, others [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

High Court Considers State Lawsuits Against Vaccine Manufacturers

Written On October 14, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The AP (10/13, Sherman) reports, “The Supreme Court is trying to sort out whether drug companies can be sued for claims of serious side effects from childhood vaccines without driving vaccine makers from the market and risking a public health crisis.” The Justices “heard arguments Tuesday in an appeal filed by Pittsburgh-area parents who want [...]

Posted in Political and/or Judicial, Prescription Drug Claims

Obesity Drug Meridia Pulled From U.S. Market Due to FDA Safety Concerns

Written On October 12, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The New York Times reported, “The diet drug Meridia is being withdrawn from the market because it can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.” Meridia’s manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories, “said on Friday that it was taking the action voluntarily but under pressure from the Food and Drug Administration.” The “withdrawal of Meridia, also known [...]

Posted in Government, Prescription Drug Claims

Meridia Recall Shows How FDA Has Changed

Written On October 11, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The Food and Drug Administration announced last Friday that the diet drug Meridia is being taken off the market. This follows literally years of complaints that Meridia increases the risks of heart attacks and strokes for those people taking the drug.
Robert Langreth, in his blog at Forbes.com, presents an excellent viewpoint of the changes in [...]

Posted in Government, Prescription Drug Claims

J&J CEO Admits Lax Quality Standards Led to Recalls

Written On October 6, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The Los Angeles Times reports, “The head of pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson, testifying on the massive recall of its widely used children’s pain relievers, admitted Thursday that ‘we did not maintain our high quality standards,’” and consequently, “children do not have access to our important medicines,” Chief Executive William C. Weldon said. He also [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

J&J Accused of Defrauding Louisiana’s Medicaid System With Risperdal Claims

Written On October 4, 2010 By Bob Kraft

Bloomberg News reports, “Johnson & Johnson should pay $351 million to Louisiana for defrauding the state’s Medicaid system with false claims about the safety of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal [risperidone], a lawyer for the state told jurors.” The “case centers on drug safety claims that J&J and its Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceutical unit made in November 2003 [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

Regulators Impose Tight Restrictions on Diabetes Drug Avandia

Written On September 23, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The New York Times reports today that distribution of the diabetes drug Avandia will now be very tightly regulated. Here are the opening paragraphs of the article:

In a highly unusual coordinated announcement, drug regulators in Europe and the United States said Thursday that Avandia, the controversial diabetes medicine, will no longer be widely available.
The drug’s [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

Johnson & Johnson Claims to Have Informed FDA on Purchasing Defective Motrin Packages From Stores

Written On September 23, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The Wall Street Journal reports on the allegation that Johnson & Johnson tried to avoid a recall on defective Motrin packages by purchasing the packages without the FDA’s knowledge. According to emails and letters reviewed by the Journal, staff at Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit messaged each other in the spring and summer [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims, Product Liability or Medical Devices

Physicians More Likely to Accept Industry Gifts if They Feel a Sense of Entitlement Because of Sacrifices Made

Written On September 21, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (9/15, Kalson) reports, “Telling physicians they shouldn’t accept gifts from drug companies is all well and good. But convincing them that doing so is wrong is another matter.” Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University “found that physicians rationalize such gifts as payback for all the sacrifices they made to get their education — [...]

Posted in Medical Malpractice, Prescription Drug Claims

Federal Panel Split on Ban of Weight-Loss Drug Meridia

Written On September 18, 2010 By Bob Kraft

The New York Times reports that a federal advisory panel was divided this week over whether to recommend banning a weight-loss drug made by Abbott Laboratories,  even though a majority agreed that the drug’s heart risk cast a shadow on its future use. Excerpt:
Eight of the 16 members of the Food and Drug Administration’s panel of [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

Study Finds Industry Ties Go Undisclosed in Medical Journal Articles

Written On September 17, 2010 By Bob Kraft

New York Times (9/14, B1, Wilson) reports, “Twenty-five out of 32 highly paid consultants to medical device companies in 2007, or their publishers, failed to reveal the financial connections in journal articles the following year, according to astudy ” published online Sept. 13 in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “The study compared major payments to [...]

Posted in Medical Malpractice, Prescription Drug Claims

Wyeth Paid Ghostwriters to Promote Hormone Therapy Drugs

Written On September 10, 2010 By Bob Kraft

This is really shameful behavior, and (almost) hard to believe. I say “almost” because there was a drug company involved, and we have learned over the past 10-15 years there is apparently nothing they won’t do for a profit. Here are excerpts from a Reuters article about how the drug company Wyeth used ghostwriters to [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims, Vioxx

FDA Raises Safety Concerns About Potential Fibromyalgia Drug

Written On August 19, 2010 By Bob Kraft

Wall Street Journal reports that the FDA revealed safety concerns about Jazz Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s potential fibromyalgia drug Rekinla (sodium oxybate), which faces a review on Friday from the FDA’s arthritis and drug-safety advisory committees. The drug is currently approved to treat narcolepsy under the brand name Vyrem, but would be dosed in a different way [...]

Posted in Consumer Information, Prescription Drug Claims

Drug Company Efforts to Outmaneuver the FDA Disturbingly Common

Written On August 13, 2010 By Bob Kraft

Time Magazine reports that the FDA panel’s recent decision to recommend keeping Avandia (rosiglitazone) on the market is “a move worth billions of dollars to GSK but that also may have put millions of patients at risk.” The move is also an example “of the drug industry’s outmaneuvering FDA regulators,” which is “disturbingly common, say [...]

Posted in Prescription Drug Claims

High Risk of Supplements Gets Exposed Again

Written On August 6, 2010 By Bob Kraft

It was disconcerting, to say the least, to read that Consumer Reports magazine, in its latest issue, labeled a dozen supplements as dangerous — especially because I have taken some of those supplements myself. USA Today agrees with my concern, and wrote about it in an editorial. Here are excerpts:
We Americans do love our dietary [...]

Posted in Consumer Information, Prescription Drug Claims, Product Liability or Medical Devices