Big Pharma, Big Greed: The Inside Story of One Lawyer's Battle to Stem the Flood of Dangerous Medicines and Protect Public Health PDF Download

Author: Sidney Kirkpatrick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947492257
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Author: Stephen A Sheller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781947492561
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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UPDATED AND REVISED EDITION: Throughout his distinguished legal career, Stephen Sheller has relished the role of the underdog, evincing a sharply honed sense of fair play and justice. Early in his career, he represented Black Panthers in Philadelphia when they were arrested on trumped up murder and conspiracy charges. Later, he was in the vanguard of lawyers who took on the tobacco industry in the 1990s and he reprised that strategy a few years later in targeting Big Pharma for its harmful products and their deleterious effects on public health. In Big Pharma, Big Greed The inside story of one lawyer's battle to stem the flood of dangerous medicines and protect public health Sheller tells a tale that is at once deeply personal but also with wide repercussions for the U.S. health care system and the hundreds of millions of Americans whose lives literally depend on it. Decades of litigating against the pharmaceutical industry taught Sheller one irreducible lesson: In too many instances, unneeded and at times dangerous drugs are foisted on the public without adequate warning as to risks, all in the service of boosting industry profits. All too often, achieving block buster status for a patent protected medication becomes an end in itself, as Big Pharma companies manipulate clinical trial data, draft scholarly articles for friendly physicians often in their pay, and market their drugs for uses that never had been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. This last practice proved to be something of an Achilles Heel for the industry. In litigation that resulted in settlement and fines in the billions, companies such as Eli Lilly acknowledged marketing drugs off label to a broad range of patients for whom the medications had never been approved. Sheller's litigation formed the basis for these settlements and the effort is ongoing. He and other plaintiffs' lawyers now are suing Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the adverse impacts of its drug, Risperdal, a second generation anti-psychotic that Sheller and others allege is linked to the growth of female breast tissue in young boys and men. Already there have been several big jury verdicts against Janssen with hundreds of more cases yet to be tried. In the book, Sheller not only recounts his major litigation battles but also makes sweeping proposals for industry reform. To restore regulatory credibility, Sheller proposes that responsibility for testing new medicines be taken away from the industry and given over to hospitals and other public entities partnering with government regulators. Pharmaceutical companies that betray the public trust would risk government- initiated dissolution. Harsh medicine to be sure, but Sheller believes entirely appropriate to the underlying malady.

Author: Stephen Sheller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615893167
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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We've heard the stories. Pharmaceutical companies failing to warn of side effects. Marketing drugs illegally. Whistleblowers bringing incriminating evidence of corporate machinations leading to huge verdicts and settlements. And in this true-legal thriller, it all started with butterfly ballots putting a presidential election on hold. Meet Stephen A. Sheller, an attorney whose career reads like an encyclopedia of the biggest legal cases of our time. Sheller fought tobacco companies and exposed fraud in their efforts to promote light cigarettes as safer than regular smokes, filed the first suit over the butterfly ballots in the controversial Bush v. Gore presidential election of 2000, and recovered a staggering $6.4 billion by going after pharmaceutical companies whose actions superseded patient safety. Pharmageddon: A Nation Betrayed is the inside story of Sheller's fights to hold accountable powerful pharmaceutical companies for aggressively campaigning for their product's distribution in spite of dangers and side effects many prescription drugs carry. From uncovering the devastating effects on children and elderly to defending all of our rights in an increasingly complex legal system, Sheller has uncovered greed and avarice displayed by these multi-billion dollar corporations. Discover what happens when a legal champion takes up a cause.

Author: Julius Getman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510775420
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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The battle between Big Pharma and scientific integrity Larger-than-life, creative, and fiercely ambitious, Dr. Charlie Bennett has a long history of revealing dangerous side effects of bestselling medicines. In 2006, his meta-analysis of existing data showed that top-selling ESAs (erythropoietin stimulating agents) created previously unrecognized risks, deaths, and serious illness. According to Dr. Steven Rosen, chief medical officer of the City of Hope Cancer treatment center, Bennett “saved more lives than anyone in American medicine.” Bennett’s work also created enemies: Bennett was accused, on the basis of flimsy evidence, of mishandling government grant money and violating the False Claims Act. Powerful interests within Big Pharma, academia, and law enforcement joined in the attack on Bennett. By 2010, he was forced from his academic position; was besieged by lawsuits; and became the victim of a coordinated, well-funded campaign to discredit him and refute his work. From pharma superstar to disgrace and disrepute in the blink of an eye. Taking On Big Pharma explores Bennett’s achievement and evaluates the charges against him. Exposed is the unsettling relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and academia. The result of more than five years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews with scientists, academicians, and federal prosecutors, this is an unflinching look at how institutions, purportedly devoted to public health and education, can be corrupted for profit—from drug sales or research grants.

Author: Gerald Posner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501152033
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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"Exorbitant prices for lifesaving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in pharmaceutical companies. Now, Americans are demanding national reckoning with a monolithic industry. In Pharma, award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author Gerald Posner uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America's wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the centure of the opioid crisis. The unexpected twists and turns of the Sakler family saga are told against the startling chronicle of a powerful industry that sits at the intersection of public health and profits. Pharma reveals how and why American drug companies have put earnings ahead of patients"--

Author: Jacky Law
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN:
Category : Bioethics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Pharmaceutical medicine is very, very big business. The top ten players earned more than $200 billion in 2003. One drug, Pfizer's cholesterol pill Lipitor, had sales of more than $9 billion. This kind of money buys an awful lot of friends among doctors and politicians. Most of those involved in the formulation of public health policy seems happy with the present system. The trouble is that the public is starting to have doubts. There is a growing sense that the vast profits of drug companies and their control of the research agenda might not be that good for our health. Jacky Law takes the reader on a journey through the pharmaceutical business and shows how the public is quite right to be concerned about conventional medicine, as it has developed since the late 1970s. She tells a story of spectacular regulatory failure, phenomenally high prices, betrayal of the public interest and a growing awareness among ordinary people that things could be very different. Sophisticated marketing and public relations, not scientific excellence, have helped corporations to preside unchallenged over matters of life and death. It is time, Law argues, for us to take responsibility for our health, not as passive consumers of pharmaceutical medicine, but as informed citizens.

Author: Martha Rosenberg
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1633889793
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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This hard-hitting exposé by leading national muckraker Martha Rosenberg blows the lid off of everything you thought you knew about Big Pharma and Big Food. What goes on behind the scenes in these industries is more suspicious, more devious, more disreputable than you could have ever imagined. Rosenberg’s message is clear: the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries are tainting public health through marketing disguised as medical education and research, aggressive lobbying, and high-level conflicts of interest. If you’re concerned about the safety of the drugs you take and the food you eat, you owe it to yourself to read this important book. Having gained the trust of more than twenty doctors, researchers, and experts who were willing to come forward and finally tell all, reporter and editorial cartoonist Martha Rosenberg presents us with her shocking findings. Explosive material from whistle-blowers, scientists, unsealed lawsuits, and Big Pharma’s and Big Food’s own marketers exposes how these industries put profits before public safety and how the government puts the interests of business before the welfare of consumers, creating a double whammy that “pimps” the public health. What Rosenberg reveals about government complicity, regulatory food- and drug-safety lapses, and legislative injustices will both shock and appall. Why have federal meat inspectors become pathetic figureheads in the nation’s slaughterhouses, laughed at by plant managers? Why are medical articles that have been exposed in lawsuits as fraudulent still standing and not retracted? Why was meat possibly containing the United States’ first mad cow sold to five California restaurants when the government said it wasn’t? And why are parents giving their one-year-olds acid reflux medications and their three-year-olds bipolar disorder medications? You’ll find the answers to these and many more disturbing questions in this revealing book.

Author: Theresa Barta
Publisher: BrownBooks.ORM
ISBN: 1612542816
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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A trial attorney recounts her fight against insurance companies who put profit before patients—and wrongfully terminate doctors who don’t comply. In the modern world of American medicine, insurance companies call the shots. Their policies often require cutting corners on patient care in pursuit of profit. These policies often reduce the amount of time doctors spend with patients, push older and cheaper medications, and limit the number of tests and referrals doctors can order. And if doctors don’t comply, they could lose their insurance affiliations. Despite the risks, some brave doctors choose to resist these policies—only to find themselves out of a job. That’s where attorney Theresa Barta steps in. Barta specializes in suing insurers and health-care companies who wrongfully terminate doctors. In Greed on Trial, Barta’s takes readers inside three dramatic and important cases from her files. In each story, we watch Theresa assemble her evidence and fight the scourge of insurance company abuse in the court of law.

Author: John Abramson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328956989
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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The inside story of how Big Pharma’s relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge—misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health. The United States spends an excess $1.5 trillion annually on health care compared to other wealthy countries—yet the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks a lowly 68th in the world. At the heart of the problem is Big Pharma, which funds most clinical trials and therefore controls the research agenda, withholds the real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by health care professionals. In this no-holds-barred exposé, Dr. John Abramson—one of the foremost experts on the drug industry’s deceptive tactics—combines patient stories with what he learned during many years of serving as an expert in national drug litigation to reveal the tangled web of financial interests at the heart of the dysfunction in our health-care system. For example, one of pharma’s best-kept secrets is that the peer reviewers charged with ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the clinical trial reports published in medical journals do not even have access to complete data and must rely on manufacturer-influenced summaries. Likewise for the experts who write the clinical practice guidelines that define our standards of care. The result of years of research and privileged access to the inner workings of the U.S. medical-industrial complex, Sickening shines a light on the dark underbelly of American health care—and presents a path toward genuine reform.

Author: Ramón Castellblanch
Publisher: Firstforumpress
ISBN: 9781935049456
Category : Drugs
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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How can health-access advocates beat the wealthy pharmaceutical industry, which has the biggest spending lobby in Washington? Ramón Castellblanch provides a ringside seat at the battle as he reveals how activists in Vermont, Maine, and California took on Big Pharma in their state legislatures to promote better and cheaper access to prescription drugs¿and ultimately pushed Congress to enact a Medicare prescription drug benefit. He also draws lessons from these cases about the possibilities for success elsewhere in the health policy arena, highlighting the crucial role that voters¿ righteous indignation plays in fueling popular support for grassroots political leaders who are taking on powerful business interests.