GlaxoSmithKline plc

Glaxo Wellcome plc and SmithKline Beecham plc merged in 2001 to become GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK), the largest pharmaceutical company in the world.

At present, private pharmaceutical companies control the development of new medicines. Profit margins, not global health needs, are what determine the next new drug. GlaxoSmithKline’s corporate motto is ‘committed to improving the quality of human life’. GSK has shown it’s commitment by suing the South African Government for trying to supply AIDS victims with medicine they can afford, knowingly producing toxic drugs, and by emitting more carcinogens than almost any other chemical producer in the UK.

Industry areas: Prescription Medicines, Vaccines, and Consumer Health Products [i.e. toothpaste, nutritional drinks and over the counter (OTC) medicine]

Market share and importance:

GlaxoSmithKline is the world’s largest pharmaceutical company. In 2000 GlaxoWellcome and SmithKline Beecham had a seven per cent share of the global pharmaceutical market, combined. In addition, the two combined companies accounted for 26 per cent of all vaccine sales, and 17 per cent of all anti-invectives (antibiotics, etc.).

History:

In January 2001 Glaxo Wellcome plc and SmithKline Beecham plc officially merged to become GlaxoSmithKline plc. GSK’s history dates back to 1715, when Plough Court pharmacy, a predecessor to SmithKline Beecham, was opened in London.

Glaxo Laboratories Limited (the predecessor to Glaxo Wellcome) was set up in 1929, with director Alec Nathan. “Nathan formed the company when it was discovered that their dried baby food ‘Glaxo’ was the cause of rickets in children. The first product Glaxo Laboratories Ltd produced was therefore Ostelin, a vitamin D concentrate to replace vitamins that were destroyed in the food drying process.”

From the 1930s onwards there was a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. The business of Glaxo Laboratories Ltd expanded greatly with the new market created by the founding of the National Health Service (NHS).[8] And in 1972 Beecham Group Ltd made an unsuccessful bid to buy Glaxo Group Ltd.

Products:

GlaxoSmithKline’s pharmaceuticals include the antidepressant Paxil/Seroxat the HIV/AIDS treatment Combivir, Zofran, a treatment for alcoholism, and Avandia a treatment for Type 2 diabetes.

Their Consumer Health Products [see Corporate Crimes, Animal Welfare] include Aquafresh Toothpaste, Tums antacid, Nicorette and the ‘nutritonal drinks’ Horlick’s, Lucozade and Ribena.

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The Problem With Pain Pills

In the new e-book “A World of Hurt: Fixing Pain Medicine’s Biggest Mistake” the New York Times reporter Barry Meier explores the murky world of prescription pain medicine. He makes a strong case that opioid drugs used to treat chronic pain, like OxyContin, not only are addictive and deadly but often don’t work for many people who use them and lead to a range of additional health problems.

It’s Mr. Meier’s second foray into the complicated world of pain relief. His first book, “Pain Killer: A ‘Wonder’ Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death,” focused on the potential for abuse of OxyContin, particularly by teenagers. In the new, shorter e-book, Mr. Meier focuses on the long-term consequences of widespread use of opioid drugs to treat pain. I recently spoke with Mr. Meier about the problems associated with painkillers, why doctors and patients resist giving them up and some of the surprising side effects of these drugs. Here’s our conversation:

Why did you decide to revisit the topic of opioid painkillers?

I wrote a book 10 years ago about the rise of OxyContin and the pain management industry. That book was focused on abuse. The prevailing medical notion was that there was this bright line involving the opioids — that they were great for patients but the problems happened when they went out on the streets and were abused by kids and others. But today it’s clear that the long-term use of these drugs can not only be ineffective for chronic pain, but they also create bad side effects for patients. Not just addiction but powerful psychological dependency, depression of hormone production, lethargy and listlessness and sleep apnea, among others. These drugs do work well for some patients, but for many other patients, they’re not working well at all.

What made you realize that more needed to be written about the consequences of these drugs?

There were two powerful factors. The number of annual overdose deaths from narcotic painkillers has grown four times higher than it was a decade ago. The current statistic is that about 16,000 people a year die of overdoses involving prescription narcotics. The thing that was even more powerful for me was the growing realization that there are risks of these drugs for patients themselves, not just for people who are out-and-out abusing these drugs. People taking these drugs as directed have far more significant negative consequences than have been previously appreciated. It became of question of, “How are we treating chronic pain over the long term and are these drugs really the answer?”

Given these concerns, why are opioid pain relievers like OxyContin the drug of choice for doctors and patients?

Insurers and government agencies seized on opioids much like the use of antidepressants for psychological problems. Drugs are cheaper than talk therapy. Drugs are cheaper than a multidisciplinary approach to chronic pain. Doctors get reimbursed to treat people quickly, so funding for other approaches is cut out. These drugs became the treatment method of choice.

Are doctors beginning to question the use of these drugs now?

There is probably a real shift going on in the medical community. There have been increasing questions raised, even among those who once promoted the drugs, that they are not the panacea to treating chronic pain. One leading expert said: “We thought the big problem with these drugs is addiction. Now we realize the problem is with patients who take them and basically opt out of life.” There is a general realization that while they do work for some patients, using them on a massive scale to treat chronic pain has had really disastrous consequences.

What is it about these drugs that creates such concern?

You look at things like disability statistics — one of the biggest indicators of disability is use of these drugs. For instance, back pain is probably the leading workplace injury. What insurers and workers’ comp agencies are discovering is that when workers are treated with high doses of opioid drugs fairly soon after these injuries, it’s the leading predictor for them not coming back to work for long periods of time, or ever.

These drugs have a very powerful impact on our production of sexual hormones — testosterone in men and estrogen in women. Lower hormone production is not just about growing hair or sexual performance; it’s about your entire energy level. These drugs are depleting people of energy. There are even data showing that the more powerful opioids, the long-acting OxyContin, methadone, fentanyl, which is sold as Duragesic, have an even more powerful effect on depressing hormone production than short-acting opioids. These drugs are not just blocking pain receptors so you don’t feel pain; they are having powerful systemic effects on people,

You also make the point that these drugs can actually lead to more pain. How does that happen?

When you take a narcotic painkiller it sets off a natural reaction called tolerance, which means your body adjusts to it. You have to take more of the drug to get the same painkilling effect. Patients would come back to doctors and say, “This drug was working really well for me, but now I’m feeling pain again.” The doctor would increase the dose. The prevailing ideology during the war on pain was that these drugs had no ceiling dose. You could keep increasing them. The doctors kept boosting them every six months. People started taking higher and higher doses of these drugs. At a certain point it appears they create a change in the neurological system where people develop hyperalgesia and they become far more sensitive to pain than when they started out on these drugs.

So what is a person who has chronic pain supposed to do?

There was an interesting German research study earlier this year that looked at what happened when people are weaned off these drugs to a nondrug treatment plan. When they are weaned off high levels of opioids, they experienced less pain than when they were on high doses.

Part of the reason for writing this book is there is an antidote to dependence on these drugs. There are plenty of data suggesting that a multidisciplinary approach to chronic pain works as effectively as high-dose opioid treatment. Patients experiencing chronic pain for whatever cause will be put through a program where they receive intensive physical therapy, behavioral counseling, intensive psychological counseling.

One of the problems with chronic pain – there’s a lot of catastrophizing around it. People think this is the way it’s going to be for the rest of their life, and that they are trapped in this horrible pain and it’s only going to get worse. There is tremendous anxiety associated with that. They not only end up taking pain drugs and strong narcotics, but they take a lot of anti-anxiety medications as well.

The whole focus on multidisciplinary programs is to get people functioning again. One of the big drawbacks of long-term opiate use is many people who take these drugs over a long period of time lose physical function. The goal is to restore physical function and to help people learn if they do have chronic pain conditions, they may experience pain for the foreseeable future, but that is not necessarily a barrier to prevent them from living a full, active life.

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Drug Known to Cause Suicidal Thoughts Results in Death of 16-Year-Old Boy

Some drugs help. Other drugs, like Cymbalta, have the potential to kill, as they did in this case.

“Wrongful death, defective product lawsuits involving the suicide of a young teen are particularly hard to deal with. The family is distraught and in shock. They want to know that what happened to their son will never happen to anyone else. The drug Cymbalta is at the center of the storm in this lawsuit and eventual settlement,” indicated Austin injury lawyer Brooks Schuelke, with Perlmutter & Schuelke, L.L.P.

Cymbalta was approved for use in the U.S. in 2004, and was usually prescribed for depression. Over time, physicians used it for other off-label purposes and the drug maker, Eli Lilly and Co., started to promote its use for other conditions. In 2012, Lilly made $5 billion on this one drug alone. As ironic as it may seem, this drug, prescribed for depression, actually perpetuated it and was well known to cause suicidal thoughts in younger individuals.

“The 16-year-old in this shocking case was given the drug to take in November 2004. One month later, he shot himself,” said Schuelke. The parents elected to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Eli Lilly and their marketing partner, Quintiles Transnational. The suit alleged that neither company adequately warned patients that the drug could cause suicidal thoughts —- often acted upon —- in some users.

Evidence that would have been presented at trial, had the case not been settled out of court, showed the drug maker hid the fact that during a patient trial of the drug, a 19-year-old male hung himself. Furthermore, the Food and Drug Administration recommended a “black box warning” about the drug’s dangerous side-effects. It was not added to the drug packaging until 2005.

This is not the only drug with dangerous side-effects that Eli Lilly has been sued over. Consider the mass tort litigation involving Prozac. A large number of those cases were also settled out of court, as the company did not want to deal with its dirty laundry in the legal arena in a public manner.

“Those facing the death of a loved one as the result of a dangerous drug need to reach out and discuss their situation with an experienced injury attorney,” stated Schuelke. “You need a voice in court on your side to obtain not only justice, but to be able to send a message to drug makers that their actions are not acceptable and they must take responsibility for them.”

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Gwen Olsen: Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness

Highlights

"Pharmaceutical industry are not in the business to cure cancer, to cure Alzheimer, to

cure heart disease because if they were, they will be onthe business putting themselves:

OUT  OF BUSINESS"

"Pharmaceutical industry doesn't want to cure people"

"Psychiatric drugs: these drugs encourage people to

remain customers of the pharmaceutical industry"

"Cholesterol drugs are lowering cholesterol excessively and causing other diseases states as a consequence"

"The drugs are always trailed against the placebo and clinical trials. Placebo is a sugar pill.

In fact, many drugs are not found to be much more efficaces than a sugar pill"

"Antidepressants are not more effective than placebo as per clinical study"

"Pharmaceutical industry makes 5 to 6 times the amount of

money as any of the others companies in United States of America"

Fish on Prozac: Anxious, anti-social, aggressive

When fish swim in waters tainted with antidepressant drugs, they become anxious, anti-social and sometimes even homicidal. New research has found that the pharmaceuticals, which are frequently showing up in U.S. streams, can alter genes responsible for building fish brains and controlling their behavior. Antidepressants are the most commonly prescribed medications in the United States; about 250 million prescriptions are filled every year. And they also are the highest-documented drugs contaminating waterways, which has experts worried about fish. “At high doses we expect brain changes” said scientist Rebecca Klaper. “But we saw the gene expression changes and then behavioral changes at doses that we consider environmentally relevant” Male minnows exposed to a small dose of Prozac in laboratories ignored females and took more time capturing prey. When the dose was increased, but still at levels found in some wastewater, males became aggressive, killing females in some cases.

Exposure to fluoxetine, known by the trade name Prozac, had a bizarre effect on male fathead minnows, according to new, unpublished research by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Male minnows exposed to a small dose of the drug in laboratories ignored females. They spent more time under a tile, so their reproduction decreased and they took more time capturing prey, according to Rebecca Klaper, a professor of freshwater sciences who spoke about her findings at a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry conference last fall. Klaper said the doses of Prozac added to the fishes’ water were “very low concentrations,” 1 part per billion, which is found in some wastewater discharged into streams.

When the dose was increased, but still at levels found in some wastewater, females produced fewer eggs and males became aggressive, killing females in some cases, Klaper said at the conference.

The drugs seem to cause these behavioral problems by scrambling how genes in the fish brains are expressed, or turned on and off. The minnows were exposed when they were a couple of months old and still developing.

There appeared to be architectural changes to the young minnows’ brains, Klaper said at the toxicology conference. Growth of the axons, which are long nerve fibers that transmit information to the body, was disrupted.

When the dose was increased, but still at levels found in some wastewater, females produced fewer eggs and males became aggressive, killing females in some cases.

The new findings build on Klaper’s previous research, which tested minnows with the gene changes to see how well they avoided predators. They swam longer distances and made more directional changes, which suggests that the drugs induced anxiety.

The drugs used in the study were among the most common in sewage: Prozac, Effexor and Tegretol. The researchers tested each drug alone and in combination.

“At high doses we expect brain changes,” Klaper said. “But we saw the gene expression changes and then behavioral changes at doses that we consider environmentally relevant.”

However, there is too little evidence to know whether pharmaceuticals are having any impacts on fish populations in the wild, said Bryan Brooks, an environmental science professor at Baylor University who has extensively studied pharmaceuticals in streams and fish.

Any changes in reproduction, eating and avoiding prey can have devastating impacts for fish populations, Klaper said.

The most vulnerable fish populations are those downstream of sewage treatment plants, where prescription drugs consistently show up in higher levels than in other waterways. It’s only within the past decade that technology has allowed plants to test for the chemicals in their wastewater and in waters downstream, though most still don’t, said Steve Carr, supervisor of the chemistry research group at the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

One of the antidepressants tested in the fish – Tegretol – comes into the treatment plants and goes out at near constant levels, said Eric Nelson, a senior chemist with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

That means the county’s treatment technology does not seem to have any effect on the drug. It comes in and leaves in a very tight range, about 150 to 400 parts per trillion, Nelson said.

Nelson said the two other drugs tested on the fish – Prozac and Effexor – are discharged in effluent at even lower levels: between about 20 and 30 parts per trillion. In comparison, the levels that altered behavior of the lab fish were 50 times higher.

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