Adverse drug reactions - Health Supreme NewsGrabs Friday, 26 February 2010
USA: The Drugs That Generated Most Adverse Event Reports
In the third quarter of 2009, the number of serious, disabling and fatal adverse drug events reported to the FDA numbered 29,065, compared to 26,809 in the same quarter a year earlier, an 8.4 percent rise, according to the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices. For the first three quarters of 2009 combined, the total number of reports was 8.1 percent higher than in the same period of 2008. (Link to article)
Adverse drug reactions on the increase. This is a trend going in the wrong direction. How about a new strategy to reverse the trend of drugs maiming and killing ever greater numbers of patients?
All it would take is a new rule: Every quarter, the drug with the highest number of adverse event reports gets removed from the market. Yes, pharmaceutical companies would squeal like pigs being stuck, but what gives them the right to put damaging products on the market and say it is for everyone's good?
Magnesium Theronate for Memory
…Begun at MIT, the research started as a part of a post-doctoral project by Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine and evolved to become a multi-center experiment focused on a new magnesium supplement, magnesium-L-theronate (MgT), that effectively crosses the blood-brain barrier to inhibit calcium flux in brain neurons.Published recently in the scientific journal Neuron, the new study found that the synthetic magnesium compound works on both young and aging animals to enhance memory or prevent its impairment. The research was carried out over a five-year period and has significant implications for the use of over-the-counter magnesium supplements. … “We are really pleased with the positive results of our studies,” says Dr. Slutsky.
Vitamin B3 shows early promise in treatment of stroke
When rats with ischemic stroke were given niacin, their brains showed growth of new blood vessels, and sprouting of nerve cells which greatly improved neurological outcome.Now research is underway at Henry Ford to investigate the effects of an extended-release form of niacin on stroke patients.
Aspartame has been Renamed and is Now Being Marketed as a Natural Sweetener
Artificial sweeteners especially aspartame has gotten a bad rap over the years, most likely due to studies showing they cause cancer. But not to worry Ajinomoto the company that makes Aspartame has changed the name to AminoSweet. It has the same toxic ingredients but a nice new sounding name.Despite the evidence gained over the years showing that aspartame is a dangerous toxin, it has remained on the global market . In continues to gain approval for use in new types of food despite evidence showing that it causes neurological brain damage, cancerous tumors, and endocrine disruption, among other things.
Abu Dhabi: Health warning on artificial sweetener
Excess usage of aspartame, a sweetener used as a sugar substitute in many foods and beverages, might lead to various health hazards, the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority has warned manufacturers in the emirate.
Placebo treatments stronger than doctors thought
“It’s not that placebos or inert substances help,” said Linda Blair, a Bath-based psychologist and spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society. Blair was not linked to the research. “It’s that people’s belief in inert substances help.”While doctors have long recognized that placebos can help patients feel better, they weren’t sure if the treatments sparked any physical changes.
In the Lancet review, researchers cite studies where patients with Parkinson’s disease were given dummy pills. That led their brains to release dopamine, a feel-good chemical, and also resulted in other changes in brain activity.
Is WebMD Pushing Eli Lilly's Agenda?
A 2002 article on the gigantic medical site about pain and depression says "Lilly is a WebMD Partner," and an advertising award in 2004 went to the FCB "client" Eli Lilly & Co./WebMD-not clients.Banner and skyscraper ads for Lilly's blockbuster antidepressant Cymbalta on WebMD's home page never seemed to yield to other advertisers in 2009-and the Washington Post reported Lilly and WebMD to be partners in 2000.
Now Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is investigating financial ties between Lilly and WebMD...
Pharmaceutical industry questions whether maximalist IP is in its own interests
On a panel on open innovation, Ludo Lauwers, senior vice president for Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals, said that the current innovation model is not sustainable for the pharmaceutical sector, and companies should seek open innovation solutions. Open innovation is a network of partnership, beyond classical networks, he said, and implies a change of mentality.Bernard Munos, advisor on corporate strategy for Eli Lilly and Company, said industry has a strong proprietary culture and a non-disclosure policy, but a change of mentality is critical and although it is happening, progress is slow.
Maybe we created our own problem,” Munos said, adding that today any innovation has so much prior art that “to secure the access to this prior art so that you can practice your innovation it is almost an endless process,” taking years and raising costs so high that sometimes it is not worth pursuing the project, he said.
This is a paradoxical situation where a patent system that was designed to foster innovation is now actually hindering it, Munos said. The patent system was created in a pre-internet days, he said, and internet changed the dynamics of innovation.
Glaxo Birth Defect Litigation Reveals Paxil Promoters on Speed Dial
by Evelyn Pringle
During his opening statement on September 15, 2009, Tracey told the jury that Doctor David Healy is "one of the most, if not the (most) world-recognized expert on pharmaceutical industry influence and the medicine, he is up there in the top five."Healy "is going to explain to you how GSK corrupted the medical literature," he said, "how they used their money and influence to have doctors that they paid put out literature into the world so doctors ... could read literature that looked like literature, looked like science, smelled like science, appeared to be science, from very important people, people that were on boards, people that were professors, people that published hundreds of articles."
Australia: Consumer and patient groups addicted to drug company money
PATIENT support groups and doctors are receiving millions of dollars a year from pharmaceutical companies under a grant system that is raising questions about their independence.The drug company Glaxco-Smith- Kline last year spent $1.3 million sponsoring 14 consumer health groups such as the Asthma Foundation, the Cancer Council, Diabetes Australia and MS Australia. And drug companies are also spending more than a $1 million a week wining and dining doctors.
Is there a link between childhood vaccines and autism?
(linked from vancouversun.com - article was pulled)
Why should the average person care about autism? Data show that one per cent of American school-aged children have an identified autism spectrum disorder. That's up from 0.0001 per cent in 1960. Where might we be in 20 years if the incidence continues to trend up 15 per cent a year as it has over the last decade? Public health agencies like to mitigate our sense of alarm by suggesting autism is just better diagnosed today. If this were the case then we'd expect to have hundreds of thousands of autistic adults in our midst -- people who've had autism all along, but were never identified/ treated as children.The numbers just do not support this theory.
Aids Truth in Russia
. . . Where is deserted Africa allegedly doomed for total extinction from AIDS? Gor Shirdel, M.D. of Irish descent who is currently practicing in Kiev, has cured two patients from AIDS."I don’t believe that AIDS is incurable. Weak immune system is an issue that has been around for at least 200 years. It can be solved. Viruses found in the blood of those with AIDS is not the cause of the disease, it’s a consequence of immunodeficiency. The world thinks AIDS is incurable because two doctors, an American, Robert Gallo and a Frenchman ...
Myths behind AIDS might lead to billions in misspending
UNAIDS’s proposed budget for 2008 includes US$1.9 billion for prevention programs aimed at young people and the workplace. While some of this will be usefully spent in sub-Saharan Africa, the rest is effectively wasted.At least US$5 billion has been wasted in this way in the last five years. Meanwhile, to the shame of the global health bureaucracy, a handful of diseases that are relatively inexpensive to prevent or treat — several vaccine-preventable diseases, diarrheal diseases, malaria and some acute respiratory infections — continue to account for about four million annual child deaths globally.
Health expert calls for end to UN HIV programme
The joint United Nations programme on HIV and Aids should be "closed down rapidly", according to a health management expert.Roger England, chairman of Health Systems Workshop - an independent advisory group on health management in poor countries - says UNAids should be disbanded as its mandate is "wrong and harmful".
"HIV exceptionalism is dead - and the writing is on the wall for UNAIDS," Mr England said. "Why a UN agency for HIV and not for pneumonia or diabetes, which both kill more people?"
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posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Friday February 26 2010
updated on Monday November 22 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2010/02/26/adverse_drug_reactions_health_supreme_newsgrabs_friday_26_february_2010.htm