Money Comes Before Everything Else
It is the only reasonable explanation for instances such as are described in this article.
Why you should never trust new wonder drugs
Last updated at 11:38am on 6th February 2007
A drug company was last week accused of concealing evidence about the safety of the antidepressant Seroxat. According to leading psychiatrist Professor David Healy, this is just the latest in a string of cases where patients and medical professionals have been misled about a drug's adverse effects.
Ten years ago, I sat faced with boxes and boxes that contained a dirty secret. Inside were thousands of confidential internal company documents about Prozac, an anti-depressant then being prescribed to millions.
The secret they revealed was that public statements about the safety of the drug were a lie; that the company knew Prozac was responsible for a raised risk of suicide and was only slightly more effective than a placebo.
Several years later I was faced with the secrets of another antidepressant - Seroxat.
No one outside the two companies, and few within them, knew what those boxes contained; I saw them because I was an expert witness in a court case.
Unfortunately, such revelations have since become all too common. Documents prised out of companies by American court cases have become the main way we have of discovering the truth about some of our best-selling drugs.
As well as Prozac, there have been another four or five other drugs exposed in this way.
Read more here.
