Drug Company Caught Lying About Diabetes Medicine Avandia
Diabetes drug maker SmithKline Beecham hid their own test data from the public on their drug Avandia because they put profits in front of safety.
EXCERPT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.
Avandia’s success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new products. But the study’s results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.
But instead of publishing the results, the company spent the next 11 years trying to cover them up, according to documents recently obtained by The New York Times. The company did not post the results on its Web site or submit them to federal drug regulators, as is required in most cases by law.
“This was done for the U.S. business, way under the radar,” Dr. Martin I. Freed, a SmithKline executive, wrote in an e-mail message dated March 29, 2001, about the study results that was obtained by The Times. “Per Sr. Mgmt request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK,” the corporate successor to SmithKline.
The heart risks from Avandia first became public in May 2007, with a study from a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who used data the company was forced by a lawsuit to post on its own Web site. In the ensuing months, GlaxoSmithKline officials conceded that they had known of the drug’s potential heart attack risks since at least 2005.
But the latest documents demonstrate that the company had data hinting at Avandia’s extensive heart problems almost as soon as the drug was introduced in 1999, and sought intensively to keep those risks from becoming public. In one document, the company sought to quantify the lost sales that would result if Avandia’s cardiovascular safety risk “intensifies.” The cost: $600 million from 2002 to 2004 alone, the document stated.
You can read the entire original article from the New York Times by using the link below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/policy/13avandia.html?_r=2&hp
Remember, there’s only one person in charge of your health and that’s you. Keep educating yourself, listening to your body and making your own decisions
on your health.
No one cares more about your health than you.
Lavonia Dionne says:
I hardly comment, however after reading a bunch of responses on this page Drug Company Caught Lying About Diabetes Medicine Avandia | Health Guy – Guy Solomon. I actually do have a couple of questions for you if you tend not to mind. Could it be simply me or does it seem like a few of these responses look like they are written by brain dead folks?
And, if you are writing on other online sites, I would like to keep up with anything new you have to post. Could you post a list of all of your social networking sites like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?