AbbVie Petition: Drug Hazards are not Trade Secrets
RxISK has started a petition on Change.org which will go to Richard Gonzalez CEO of AbbVie, and Daniel Welch CEO of InterMune, who are at present taking a legal action to block the European Medicines Agency’s policy of open access to clinical trial data.
The reason to petition is in this post Let’s do the AbbVie again and the Petition is Here.
Can you take 30 seconds to sign ?
Petition
Let us see Drug Data! Drug hazards are not “trade secrets”!
Drug companies maximize the sales of new drugs by hyping their benefits while downplaying significant risks. In 2010 the European Medicines Agency began releasing patient-level data from the clinical trials used to approve new medicines in Europe – a development hailed by American, and European researchers and researchers around the world as a major step towards drug safety.
This process has been shut down by a lawsuit taken by two American corporations – AbbVie, makers of Humira, the number one selling medication in the world with projected sales of $10 billion in 2013; and InterMune, whose pulmonary-fibrosis drug Esbriet has recently been approved in Europe at a cost of over $40,000 per year.
AbbVie and InterMune have filed suit to deny access to the data from their trials on the benefits and harms of these drugs, claiming these vital facts are “trade secrets” whose release would harm their profits. Their action has led to the shutdown of the entire public-access program, leaving millions of patients worldwide, and their doctors, in the dark.
We call on AbbVie and InterMune to drop their European Union lawsuit and release all patient level data on Humira, Esbriet and their other products. Vital data on drug safety should never be hidden as a “trade secret.” By copying this petition to President Barack Obama and members of his Cabinet we call on them to ensure that meaningful public access to clinical trial data becomes the policy of the FDA and is written into any international trade agreements governing the sale of prescription drugs and devices.
Copies to:
- President Barack Obama;
- Margaret Hamburg, M.D., Commissioner, Food & Drug Administration;
- Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, United Nations;
- World Health Organization Director Dr Margaret Chan.
1511 signers now.
If I was a lawyer, I would take out a full page in the Daily Mail:
1. Seroxat Group Action
A Group Action by Secure Law is currently on course to sue GlaxoSmithKline.
If you have been harmed by Seroxat contact Secure Law
2. Followed by a banner with Rxisk.org
If you worry about side-effects from the prescription drugs you are taking,
look at Rxisk.org
I suggest Secure Law and Rxisk.org talk to each other and mount a publicity campaign, together, and, put this in the public spotlight and then we might get somewhere…….
If you want to get a Group Action off the Ground, you do not, try and talk to the Head CEO, of the company you are attacking…that is groundless and naïve.
You fuel the attack with evidence and then you attack…..
Furthermore, today’s front page headline in our Scottish National Press.
*Doctors who help drug addicts to go ‘cold turkey’ are subjecting them to “torture” under UN rules, a Scottish Government report has said.
Tory Chief whip John Lamont said:
“The idea that helping a drug addict onto a road of abstinence could be somehow tortuous is ridiculous by almost anybody’s standards.”
Seroxat anyone?
And further:
The UN Human Rights Council said in February 2013, by denying effective drug treatment, drug policies intentionally subject a large group of people to severe physical pain, suffering and humiliation.
Quoting the UN, such approaches are ‘effectively punishing them (addicts) for using drugs and trying to coerce them into abstinence, in complete disregard of the chronic nature of dependency and of the scientific evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of punitive measures.”
When they are talking like this about Heroin, Cocaine and they don’t have a factor in their heads about Prescription Drugs, then we have a long road to travel……
Anne, I wish had seen your point regarding the UN’s February 2013 statement.
I would have included it in a short email/letter sent straight to Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN’s present High Commissioner on Human Rights.
Inappropriate, rude, of me to do. But hopefully, his office (as requested) will investigate the UN’s position further
Dee
we should not have long road to travel withdrawl from prescription drugs such as benzos is well known to docs , ssri,s are the same thing, no one seems to want to know about all this I believe doctors are aware but no one will admit to it. There is help for the illegal drug users but no help for us, ah but then the docs don,t prescribe heroin do they!
1770 signers now.
Drug companies should not be allowed to evaluate their own products?
In our midst, Tescos blame everybody else but themselves for selling horsemeat,
It was given to us say Tescos, so we sold it. Nothing to do with us.
Escape free, do Tescos.
However, when my drug causes my daughter to look at me in sheer horror and lies in her bed for two years, so riddled with anxiety that she cannot attend school, because of Seroxat, then hi five to David, high five to Ben, hi five to all the commenters who give the answers and hey, open an office in New York, a PO Box No. and get a lawyer who talks the talk a la John Grisham in his book, The King of Tortes, whereby lawyers advertise for cases and then bang bang the case is on……
The King of Tortes is essential reading for all lawyers involving cases of pharmaceutical fraud.
This is not fiction, this is how it works, and this is why lawyers have successfully sued in the US with Paxil, and this is why lawyers in the UK have not the faintest idea how to tackle one of the biggest cases of fraud from GSK, this country has even seen.
Read the book and do it and is lawyer No. 3 coming along soon?