Moderator Emeritus Skyler Posted February 23, 2016 Moderator Emeritus Share Posted February 23, 2016 http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/how-army-pharma-lobbyists-washington-have-locked-one-biggest-corporate-ripoff As always, LISTEN TO YOUR BODY! A proud supporter of the 10% (or slower) rule. Requip - 3/16 ZERO Total time on 25 years. Lyrica: 8/15 ZERO Total time on 7 or 8 yrs.BENZO FREE 10/13 (started tapering 7/10) Total time on 25 years. Read my intro thread here, and check the about me section. "No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up." Lily Tomlin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btdt Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 ". Many alleged patient groups agitating for approval of expensive new drugs or fighting so-called "barriers" to treatment and mental illness "stigma" are actually slick drug company marketing creations. Many are entrenched in schools and on college campuses to capture "psychiatric patients" at an early age, often ensuring decades of sales. This is exactly what i fear is happening here in Canada with the new Mental health awareness campaign "According to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the drug industry spent $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress last year. He reports that there are more drug company lobbyists than members of Congress. Even before Gilead's $1000-a-pill hepatitis drug, the result of this unsavory lobbying is a $50 billion annual taxpayer gift to the drug industry--a fact that should outrage every taxpayer." Then they get some of it back in court cases as seen here: " The same year Alaska won a $15 million settlement from Eli Lilly in a suit to recoup medical costs generated by Medicaid patients who developed diabetes while taking Zyprexa." Who is left out the poor suckers who have been damaged that is who YOU! To be fair zyprexa was one drug which there was a payout to the folks damaged and from what I recall if you developed diabetes while taking zyprexa you would get $700.00 yes that decimal is in the right place. This again about who's money they are all playing with. It is rare for those damaged to get anything at all when the gov't sues pharma... the moneys for patients did not come out of what was won by the gov't it was a separate court case. There were three different American lawsuits for this one drug... see here. Lilly Set To Hand Over $1.4B Zyprexa Payout: Report ... www.law360.com/.../lilly-set-to-hand-over-1-4b-zyprexa-payout-report Jan 14, 2009 - Eli Lilly & Co. is reportedly one step closer to finalizing a $1.4 billion settlement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of ... Lilly agrees to $15 million payout to settle Alaskan Zyprexa ... www.pharmatimes.com/.../Lilly_agrees_to_15_million_payout_to_settle... Mar 26, 2008 - Zyprexa (olanzapine) first hit the US market in 1996 and is approved for the short- and long-term treatment of schizophrenia, acute mixed or ... Community Update Re: Zyprexa Class Action | Disability ... blog.disabilityalliancebc.org/?p=579 Feb 1, 2012 - We know from clients and other organizations that there is confusion and misunderstanding in the community about how Zyprexa payouts ... WARNING THIS WILL BE LONG Had a car accident in 85 Codeine was the pain med when I was release from hosp continuous use till 89 Given PROZAC by a specialist to help with nerve pain in my leg 89-90 not sure which year Was not told a thing about it being a psych med thought it was a pain killer no info about psych side effects I went nuts had hallucinations. As I had a head injury and was diagnosed with a concussion in 85 I was sent to a head injury clinic in 1990 five years after the accident. I don't think they knew I had been on prozac I did not think it a big deal and never did finish the bottle of pills. I had tests of course lots of them. Was put into a pain clinic and given amitriptyline which stopped the withdrawal but had many side effects. But I could sleep something I had not done in a very long time the pain lessened. My mother got cancer in 94 they switched my meds to Zoloft to help deal with this pressure as I was her main care giver she died in 96. I stopped zoloft in 96 had withdrawal was put on paxil went nutty quit it ct put on resperidol quit it ct had withdrawal was put on Effexor... 2years later celexa was added 20mg then increased to 40mg huge personality change went wild. Did too fast taper off Celexa 05 as I felt unwell for a long time prior... quit Effexor 150mg ct 07 found ****** 8 months into withdrawal learned some things was banned from there in 08 have kept learning since. there is really not enough room here to put my history but I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things especially any of the drugs mentioned above. One thing I would like to add here is this tidbit ALL OPIATES INCREASE SEROTONIN it is not a huge jump to being in chronic pain to being put on an ssri/snri and opiates will affect your antidepressants and your thinking. As I do not update much I will put my quit date Nov. 17 2007 I quit Effexor cold turkey. http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/1096-introducing-myself-btdt/ There is a crack in everything ..That's how the light gets in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btdt Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Should I stick my head in the sand and stop looking... it gets worse https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100402/1844298860.shtml How Pfizer And The US Gov't Set Up A Fake Subsidiary To Take The Brunt Of Lawsuit Over Falsely Marketed Drugs from the don't-you-feel-healthy-now dept The pharmaceutical industry is a huge mess, which has little, if anything, to do with making people healthy. The way the system is currently designed, if it's more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to put you at greater risk, it will do so. And sometimes the US gov't will help them brush it under the rug. Reader Bill Pickett points us to a recent investigative report concerning the big, high-publicity lawsuit the US gov't filed against Pfizer, after the company blatantly went against FDA approvals and marketed a drug for all sorts of alternative uses, which the FDA had specifically noted could be dangerous and could put people at greater risk. Where the story gets scary is in what happened when all this came out. Federal officials announced a criminal case over this, but they didn't actually sue Pfizer directly. Instead, they sued a (not kidding) subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Pfizer, which was basically set up just take the brunt of this lawsuit: According to court documents, Pfizer Inc. owns (a) Pharmacia Corp., which owns ( Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, which owns © Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. LLC, which in turn owns (d) Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc. It is the great-great-grandson of the parent company. But it was only that last one, Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc., that was sued -- and the report also notes that this company just happened to be set up the same day that Pfizer and federal officials worked out a deal for it to plead guilty -- even though it, as an entity, hadn't done anything. Why did they do this? Well, if Pfizer itself had been found guilty then it would be barred from Medicare and Medicaid, and prosecutors figured it would effectively close down Pfizer -- and Pfizer was deemed "too big to fail" like that. Why? I have no idea. If the company really did have to close down, it seems likely that others would have picked up the company's various products -- and perhaps done so without putting people's lives at risk. Really, the problem here is the way the entire system is set up. The FDA requires expensive and involved clinical trials. This is very good, because we want to make sure that any drugs actually do what they're supposed to do, and don't have serious side effects or cause even worse problems. But, the system is currently set up so that the pharmaceutical company itself is in charge of paying for and running those clinical trials, which creates two very problematic situations. First, it gives the company all sorts of incentives to fudge the results or to pretend the results said something different than they really did (see the example above, or Merck with Vioxx) and second, it contributes to the "expense" that a drugmaker can claim comes from developing a new drug, which is part of why it demands patent rights. But if you break out the costs of the clinical trials, the marketing-hidden-ad-development-costs, and the amount of research that's actually funded by gov't grants -- you find that pharmaceutical firms really aren't spending nearly as much as they claim. A big part of the issue is the clinical trials, and that's leading to all sorts of questionable behavior. In the past, some have suggested that such trials should be conducted by the gov't, rather than by the pharma companies themselves. While I'm not sure that's the answer, it's pretty clear that the existing system is not working, if our end goal is to make people healthier. WARNING THIS WILL BE LONG Had a car accident in 85 Codeine was the pain med when I was release from hosp continuous use till 89 Given PROZAC by a specialist to help with nerve pain in my leg 89-90 not sure which year Was not told a thing about it being a psych med thought it was a pain killer no info about psych side effects I went nuts had hallucinations. As I had a head injury and was diagnosed with a concussion in 85 I was sent to a head injury clinic in 1990 five years after the accident. I don't think they knew I had been on prozac I did not think it a big deal and never did finish the bottle of pills. I had tests of course lots of them. Was put into a pain clinic and given amitriptyline which stopped the withdrawal but had many side effects. But I could sleep something I had not done in a very long time the pain lessened. My mother got cancer in 94 they switched my meds to Zoloft to help deal with this pressure as I was her main care giver she died in 96. I stopped zoloft in 96 had withdrawal was put on paxil went nutty quit it ct put on resperidol quit it ct had withdrawal was put on Effexor... 2years later celexa was added 20mg then increased to 40mg huge personality change went wild. Did too fast taper off Celexa 05 as I felt unwell for a long time prior... quit Effexor 150mg ct 07 found ****** 8 months into withdrawal learned some things was banned from there in 08 have kept learning since. there is really not enough room here to put my history but I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things especially any of the drugs mentioned above. One thing I would like to add here is this tidbit ALL OPIATES INCREASE SEROTONIN it is not a huge jump to being in chronic pain to being put on an ssri/snri and opiates will affect your antidepressants and your thinking. As I do not update much I will put my quit date Nov. 17 2007 I quit Effexor cold turkey. http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/1096-introducing-myself-btdt/ There is a crack in everything ..That's how the light gets in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nz11 Posted February 29, 2016 Share Posted February 29, 2016 i dont even live in america but even im damn outraged at what im reading... "Doctors who veer from guidelines on dosage strengths and combinations of medications for Medicaid patients are sent 'Dear Doctor' letters pointing out that their prescribing patterns fall outside the norm," it reports. Doctors are also notified if patients "are renewing prescriptions," lest they have "setbacks in their condition." One such program sends registered nurses to the homes of patients who are on expensive brand drugs to ensure "compliance"--that they have not stopped taking the drugs. Just trying to help. trying to help who ?? their bottom line i guess. Do you think Trump could sort this crap out? Thought for the day: Lets stand up, and let’s speak out , together. G Olsen We have until the 14th. Feb 2018. URGENT REQUEST Please consider submitting for the petition on Prescribed Drug Dependence and Withdrawal currently awaiting its third consideration at the Scottish Parliament. You don't even have to be from Scotland. By clicking on the link below you can read some of the previous submissions but be warned many of them are quite harrowing. http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01651 Please tell them about your problems taking and withdrawing from antidepressants and/or benzos. Send by email to petitions@parliament.scot and quote PE01651 in the subject heading. Keep to a maximum of 3 sides of A4 and you can't name for legal reasons any doctor you have consulted. Tell them if you wish to remain anonymous. We need the numbers to help convince the committee members we are not isolated cases. You have until mid February. Thank you Recovering paxil addict None of the published articles shed light on what ssri's ... actually do or what their hazards might be. Healy 2013. This is so true, with anything you get on these drugs, dependance, tapering, withdrawal symptoms, side effects, just silent. And if there is something mentioned then their is a serious disconnect between what is said and reality! "Every time I read of a multi-person shooting, I always presume that person had just started a SSRI or had just stopped." Dr Mosher. Me too! Over two decades later, the number of antidepressant prescriptions a year is slightly more than the number of people in the Western world. Most (nine out of 10) prescriptions are for patients who faced difficulties on stopping, equating to about a tenth of the population. These patients are often advised to continue treatment because their difficulties indicate they need ongoing treatment, just as a person with diabetes needs insulin. Healy 2015 I believe the ssri era will soon stand as one of the most shameful in the history of medicine. Healy 2015 Let people help people ... in a natural, kind, non-addictive (and non-big pharma) way. J Broadley 2017 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btdt Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 I do not think any one politician can change pharma the roots are too deep... the numbers have them beat from the get go... 1000 pharma lobiest for every one senator... they take pharma money then their hands are tied cause they are in it up to their eyeballs... some of them if what I read is the truth. I can't recall which book I read that in or if the numbers are right ...so I did a goodle search you pick which one you want to read or if you have the stomach for it... I don't living in the US either but what I know is if it happens there it happens here... in Canada. Lobbying in the United States - Wikipedia, the free ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States While the number of lobbyists in Washington is estimated to be over twelve .... was not lobbying per se, since it usually did not mean changes in legislation. ..... lobbyingarena are those who might influence legislation: House & Senate ..... the Frenchpharmaceutical firm Sanofi "sprang into action to try and slow the process. Lobbying | OpenSecrets - OpenSecrets.org https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ ... and other organizations spend billions of dollars each year to lobby Congress and federal agencies. Some ... Number of Lobbyists* ... *The number of unique, registeredlobbyists who have actively lobbied. ... Registrant, American University of Beirut, View Report ... Coal money takes the long road to Alabama Senate race. Lobbying Spending Database Pharmaceuticals/Health ... www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=h04 Pharmaceuticals/Health Products ... Total Number of Lobbyists Reported: 1,367 ...Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America, $18,445,000 .... NOTE: All lobbyingexpenditures on this page come from the Senate Office of Public Records. Data for ... Power in numbers: Lobbyists have Congress covered | Face ... www.facethefactsusa.org/.../power-numbers-lobbyists-have-congress-cov... Jan 14, 2013 - 535 senators and representatives; 12,719 lobbyists. ... By far, the single biggest spender in the lobbying game was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ...Looking at whole industries, the pharmaceutical/health products sector far ... How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy ... www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/...lobbyists...american.../390822/ Apr 20, 2015 - And very few companies had their own Washington lobbyists prior to the 1970s. ... that there is no “normal” level of business lobbying in Americandemocracy. ... For example, pharmaceutical companies had long opposed the idea of.... is income inequality—one of [Senator Bernie] Sanders' top themes.”. Public Opinion and Interest Group Politics: South Africa's ... https://books.google.ca/books?isbn=0798302925 Heather A. Thuynsma - 2012 - Political Science Lobbying Interest groups lobby representatives and senators to view their side of ... of the US House and 100 senators, there are 25,7 times as many lobbyists per ... Thepharmaceutical industry has more than twice as many lobbyists as there ... OPINION: Big Pharma's stranglehold on Washington ... www.publicintegrity.org/.../opinion-big-pharmas-stranglehold-washingto... Feb 11, 2013 - Drug companies have armies of lobbyists, and the rest of us are paying the price ... It's no surprise that American corporations spend billions of dollars eachyear on lobbying, ... It's actually the pharmaceutical industry that spends the mosteach year to influence our ... Anybody who feels the urge, ask Sen. WARNING THIS WILL BE LONG Had a car accident in 85 Codeine was the pain med when I was release from hosp continuous use till 89 Given PROZAC by a specialist to help with nerve pain in my leg 89-90 not sure which year Was not told a thing about it being a psych med thought it was a pain killer no info about psych side effects I went nuts had hallucinations. As I had a head injury and was diagnosed with a concussion in 85 I was sent to a head injury clinic in 1990 five years after the accident. I don't think they knew I had been on prozac I did not think it a big deal and never did finish the bottle of pills. I had tests of course lots of them. Was put into a pain clinic and given amitriptyline which stopped the withdrawal but had many side effects. But I could sleep something I had not done in a very long time the pain lessened. My mother got cancer in 94 they switched my meds to Zoloft to help deal with this pressure as I was her main care giver she died in 96. I stopped zoloft in 96 had withdrawal was put on paxil went nutty quit it ct put on resperidol quit it ct had withdrawal was put on Effexor... 2years later celexa was added 20mg then increased to 40mg huge personality change went wild. Did too fast taper off Celexa 05 as I felt unwell for a long time prior... quit Effexor 150mg ct 07 found ****** 8 months into withdrawal learned some things was banned from there in 08 have kept learning since. there is really not enough room here to put my history but I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things especially any of the drugs mentioned above. One thing I would like to add here is this tidbit ALL OPIATES INCREASE SEROTONIN it is not a huge jump to being in chronic pain to being put on an ssri/snri and opiates will affect your antidepressants and your thinking. As I do not update much I will put my quit date Nov. 17 2007 I quit Effexor cold turkey. http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/1096-introducing-myself-btdt/ There is a crack in everything ..That's how the light gets in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btdt Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 Something is out of balance in Washington. Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures—more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s. Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labor unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business. As companies became more politically active and comfortable during the late 1980s and the 1990s, their lobbyists became more politically visionary. For example, pharmaceutical companies had long opposed the idea of government adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, on the theory that this would give government bargaining power through bulk purchasing, thereby reducing drug industry profits. But sometime around 2000, industry lobbyists dreamed up the bold idea of proposing and supporting what became Medicare Part D—a prescription drug benefit, but one which explicitly forbade bulk purchasing—an estimated $205 billion benefit to companies over a 10-year period. What makes today so very different from the 1970s is that corporations now have the resources to play offense and defense simultaneously on almost any top-priority issue. When I surveyed corporate lobbyists on the reasons why their companies maintained a Washington office, the top reason was “to protect the company against changes in government policy.” On a one-to-seven scale, lobbyists ranked this reason at 6.2 (on average). But closely behind, at 5.7, was “Need to improve ability to compete by seeking favorable changes in government policy.” http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/how-corporate-lobbyists-conquered-american-democracy/390822/ WARNING THIS WILL BE LONG Had a car accident in 85 Codeine was the pain med when I was release from hosp continuous use till 89 Given PROZAC by a specialist to help with nerve pain in my leg 89-90 not sure which year Was not told a thing about it being a psych med thought it was a pain killer no info about psych side effects I went nuts had hallucinations. As I had a head injury and was diagnosed with a concussion in 85 I was sent to a head injury clinic in 1990 five years after the accident. I don't think they knew I had been on prozac I did not think it a big deal and never did finish the bottle of pills. I had tests of course lots of them. Was put into a pain clinic and given amitriptyline which stopped the withdrawal but had many side effects. But I could sleep something I had not done in a very long time the pain lessened. My mother got cancer in 94 they switched my meds to Zoloft to help deal with this pressure as I was her main care giver she died in 96. I stopped zoloft in 96 had withdrawal was put on paxil went nutty quit it ct put on resperidol quit it ct had withdrawal was put on Effexor... 2years later celexa was added 20mg then increased to 40mg huge personality change went wild. Did too fast taper off Celexa 05 as I felt unwell for a long time prior... quit Effexor 150mg ct 07 found ****** 8 months into withdrawal learned some things was banned from there in 08 have kept learning since. there is really not enough room here to put my history but I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things especially any of the drugs mentioned above. One thing I would like to add here is this tidbit ALL OPIATES INCREASE SEROTONIN it is not a huge jump to being in chronic pain to being put on an ssri/snri and opiates will affect your antidepressants and your thinking. As I do not update much I will put my quit date Nov. 17 2007 I quit Effexor cold turkey. http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/1096-introducing-myself-btdt/ There is a crack in everything ..That's how the light gets in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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