The Church of GSKology 2

December, 4, 2013 | 7 Comments

Comments

  1. The Entrepreneurial Franchising Effect of Drugs Inc and Incorporation of all things in Health Care has polluted and corrupted the concept of doctors fulfilling their duties. Patient care is lost in Capitalism.

  2. It is not now a question of who is burying Paxil Study 329, and who knows about it.
    It is now a question of who doesn’t know about it.

    Clearly, David Cameron, doesn’t know about it.

    It is now ten years since litigation began against GlaxoSmithKline and in that time we have been trodden on and side-stepped and almost casually told to stop complaining.

    We have not stopped complaining for ten years. And, so we are a little bit put out that David Cameron has chosen GlaxosmithKline to be part of a trade mission to China.

    David Cameron doesn’t know anything about Paxil Study 329, he knows nothing about Seroxat, he knows a bit about China and GSKgate.

    Paxilgate is way down the line of things David Cameron might worry about.
    But, he does have rather a bad habit of keeping company with advisors with murky histories, who have a habit of disappearing.

    We have been injured for years and years, with the experiment on children, and today, now, there will be hundreds of people desperately trying to get out of the hideous place that Seroxat has put them.

    Seroxat should have been taken off The Market in 2002 when all the negative publicity flared up.
    In fact, it should not have reached The Market at all…….

    The MHRA have had every opportunity to take it Off The Market.

    GlaxosmithKline, the MHRA are still allowing too much suffering from Seroxat and although sales are well down compared to other anti-depressants, there is always some sucker out there whose doctor will recommend Seroxat and subject their patient to a life of purgatory………and, with the somewhat, usual, narcissistic attitude from a doctor……

    From avarice and cowardice through to bravado, there is a patronising pretence.

    Playing fast and loose with clinical trials is one thing, playing fast and loose with us is another, but playing fast and loose with David Cameron is very, very dangerous.

    One day, in the future, David Cameron will get hot under his collar and ask why he wasn’t told about all the litigation and all about Seroxat and all about how he was made into a complete fool in ‘China’ and how his election prospects diminished under a glare of negative publicity because important people neglected to tell him of a rather disturbing secret about Paxil Study 329, which has yet to hit a headline in the UK.

    The final question on the Church of GSKology can be answered with another question.
    Who is blocking the UK litigation and why?
    Perhaps British lawyers should be a bit more Gotzsche about it?

    Seroxat is a hot potato.
    Witty, another bloody………..suicide………………………..?

  3. This video by Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor seems to bring a lot of the issues together. It comes courtesy of blogger Leonie Fennell, whose son Shane Clancy killed himself and another man after seventeen days on citalopram, an SSRI antidepressant.

    http://wp.me/pUfFP-2Pn

    Sinead questions the diagnosis of “bipolar disorder” given her by an Irish psychiatrist who, she said, seemed to think her worst psychiatric symptom was her harsh criticism of the Catholic Church! She reports being put on “toxic” doses of medication, which caused rapid weight gain and left her feeling heavily sedated, and given no warning of the trouble she would have withdrawing from these meds. Well worth a look.

  4. Hi Dr Healy,

    Can you shed some light on “until recently” in “This kind of evidence until recently was thought to be the strongest causal evidence there was in clinical practice.” Is there some referenced work recently published on this and if so can you advise please of the citation? It is an important issue.

    • Clifford

      Any authoritative source on the issue like the Federal Judicial Manual still regards challenge-dechallenge-rechallenge as the best bet. But companies have managed through the repetition of RCTs are the gold standard to create the impression that CDR is just anecdotal – see the Burn in Hell post. RCTs are a gold standard way to Hide Adverse Events

      David

      • Thanks. So it is not so far a concerted attempt to rewrite principles of evidence but merely the creation of a false conception of a consensus by repetition before the great (evidentially) “unwashed” (albeit the possibly otherwise highly medically qualified).

        Not the first time nor the last time that kind of thing has been done.

        The “anecdotal” evidence bit is wearing thin these days though.

        What is the difference between scientist A with demonstrably perfect recall reciting each measurement of an experiment and scientist B with a very bad memory reciting each measurement from his lab book?

        Answer: you cannot be sure scientist B did not write any measurements down incorrectly and she cannot remember whether she did or not.

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