A version of this story was published in The Washington Post.

As the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation Tuesday into makers of narcotic painkillers and groups that champion them, a leading pain advocacy organization said it was dissolving “due to irreparable economic circumstances.”

The American Pain Foundation, which described itself as the nation’s largest organization for pain patients, was the focus of a December investigation by ProPublica in The Washington Post that detailed its close ties to drugmakers.

The group received 90 percent of its $5 million in funding in 2010 from the drug and medical-device industry, ProPublica found, and its guides for patients, journalists and policymakers had played down the risks associated with opioid painkillers while exaggerating the benefits.

It is unclear whether the group’s announcement Tuesday evening — that it would “cease to exist, effective immediately” — was related to letters sent earlier in the day from Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the finance panel chairman, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to the foundation, drug companies and others.

In the letters, the senators cited an “an epidemic of accidental deaths and addiction resulting from the increased sale and use of powerful narcotic painkillers,” including popular brand names like Oxycontin, Vicodin and Opana.

Growing evidence, they wrote, suggests that drug companies “may be responsible, at least in part, for this epidemic by promoting misleading information about the drugs’ safety and effectiveness.”

The American Pain Foundation’s website carried a statement Tuesday night saying its board had voted May 3 to dissolve the organization because it couldn’t stay “operational.” The foundation did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

The senators are targeting a who’s who of the pain industry, seeking extensive records and correspondence documenting the links, financial and otherwise, between them and the makers of the top-prescribed narcotic painkillers.

Letters went to three pharmaceutical companies, Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals and Johnson & Johnson, as well as five groups that support pain patients, physicians or research: the American Pain Foundation, American Academy of Pain Medicine, American Pain Society, Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group, and the Center for Practical Bioethics.

The Federation of State Medical Boards, the trade group for agencies that license doctors, received a letter, as did The Joint Commission, an independent nonprofit that accredits hospitals nationwide and made pain management a national priority in 2001.

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2003 noted that the commission partnered with Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, to distribute pain educational materials nationwide. The committee’s letter to Purdue noted that the company pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it misled regulators, physicians and consumers about Oxycontin’s risk of addiction.

The senators requested payment information since 1997 to 10 groups and eight people, including two doctors featured in ProPublica’s December report. They asked about any influence the companies had on a 2004 pain guide for physicians that was distributed by the Federation of State Medical Boards; on the American Pain Society’s guidelines; and on the American Pain Foundation’s Military/Veterans Pain Initiative.

In addition to citing ProPublica’s work, the letters also mention the reporting of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today.

Patients in serious pain need access to opioids, the senators wrote, but drugmakers and health-care groups “must distribute accurate information about these drugs in order to prevent improper use and diversion to drug abusers.”

“The problem of opioid abuse is bad and getting worse,” Sen. Grassley said in a statement. “Something has to change.”

“When it comes to these highly addictive painkillers, improper relationships between pharmaceutical companies and the organizations that promote their drugs can put lives at risk,” Baucus said in a prepared statement.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, chairman of psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., and president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, applauded the investigation.

“These groups, these pain organizations … helped usher in an epidemic that’s killed 100,000 people by promoting aggressive use of opioids,” Kolodny said. “What makes this especially disturbing is that despite overwhelming evidence that their effort created a public health crisis, they’re continuing to minimize the risk of addiction.”

Concerns about the overuse and abuse of painkillers have intensified in recent years. As sales of the powerful drugs have boomed — rising 300 percent since 1999 — so, too, have overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 14,800 overdose deaths in 2008, more than cocaine and heroin combined, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2009, the use and misuse of the drugs were cited in more than 475,000 emergency department visits, nearly doubling the 2004 number, the CDC said.

Pain doctors and patient groups say that while drug overdoses are a legitimate concern, only a small percentage of deaths involves patients who receive them from their doctors. Most deaths involve illicitly obtained drugs, statistics show.

The groups also say that patients’ risk is low if they do not have addictive personalities, and that any restrictions should not punish patients who suffer from serious pain.

In recent weeks, two articles in medical journals have documented different aspects of abuse.

According to a paper published online this week by the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of every eight high school seniors surveyed said they had used prescription opioids for nonmedical reasons.

A paper released last month by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that the rate of newborns diagnosed with drug withdrawal jumped threefold from 2000 to 2009. And the rate of mothers using opioids at the time of delivery was five times higher in 2009. (Not all babies born to mothers using the drugs exhibit signs of withdrawal.)

Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that makes the painkiller Nucynta, said in a statement that it “is committed to the responsible prescribing and appropriate use of opioid pain medications” and has supported educational websites about safe use.

The company is reviewing the senators’ letter and “will work with them to fulfill their request for information,” spokesman Mark Wolfe said via email.

Purdue Pharma acknowledged in a statement that it had received the letter, was reviewing it and looked forward to “cooperating with the committee on this matter.”

Endo did not return a request for comment. A spokeswoman for The Joint Commission said the group had just received the senators’ letter and had no comment yet. The Federation of State Medical Boards responded but did not offer immediate comment.

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, ProPublica, May 8, 2012, 9:57 p.m.

The article American Pain Foundation Shuts Down as Senators Launch Investigation of Prescription Narcotics appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Since April, drugmaker Allergan, best known for its wrinkle-fighting drugs Botox and Juvederm, has been posting on its website the payments it made to physicians for promotional speaking and consulting and the value of meals it provided to them.

But the Irvine, Calif., company recently removed all except the most recent payments from its website, erasing the record of those it had paid to help market its products from the third quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of last year.

Allergan’s website now includes only those payments it made to doctors in the third quarter of 2011 — and then only ranges, not specific dollar amounts.

Allergan’s removal of the data won’t prevent the public from viewing it. ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database of industry payments to doctors includes the figures Allergan had reported for the last half of 2010. Later this month, the company will post data for the full year 2011, and that will be added to the ProPublica database as well.

Allergan is among 12 pharmaceutical companies that post such payments to the web, either voluntarily or as a result of legal settlements with the U.S. government over allegations of improper marketing and illegal kickbacks to doctors. (Allergan pleaded guilty in September 2010 to a misdemeanor charge of promoting Botox for uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It paid $600 million to resolve related criminal and civil lawsuits.)

Allergan is the only company to pull earlier payments from its site. The other 11 companies simply add new data while maintaining an archive of previous releases.

Allergan spokeswoman Heather Katt said in an email that Allergan remains in compliance with the terms of its corporate integrity agreement with the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As part of that legal agreement, Katt said, Allergan was required to expand its disclosures in a second phase starting in November. In addition to speaking, consulting and meals, it now posts payments for research, royalties, travel and educational materials. Allergan decided to take down the earlier disclosures to avoid confusion, she said.

“The earlier reports were accurate, but represented limited data and as such would not provide meaningful or accurate comparisons,” Katt said. Donald White, a spokesman for the health department’s inspector general, agreed that Allergan was in compliance with its corporate integrity agreement despite the removal of payment data.

Allergan’s Katt said removing the older information was “in the spirit of providing the general public with the most current and comprehensive information.”

Every pharmaceutical company will have to publicly report all payments to physicians nationwide beginning next year under a provision of the health-care overhaul known as the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, ProPublica, Feb. 1, 2012, 11:03 a.m.

The article Allergan Erases Doctor Payment Records appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

A global executives’ organization, meeting in San Francisco to host leaders of healthcare, biotech and pharmaceutical companies as well as bankers and other investors, called on President Obama and the leaders of Congress to join an effort by others in business, education, government and philanthropy to “work across disciplines to overcome obstacles” to solving the nation’s healthcare crisis.

The proclamation was presented by George Bickerstaff, Executive Chairman of The Global Leaders, a digital business community for 2 million CEOs and other business leaders, for the opening of The Global Leaders 2nd Annual Healthcare Forum, a program that brought together scientists, industry leaders and investors to seek ways to bridge the gap between healthcare innovation and financial resources.

The Global Leaders employs a problem-solving method called “Group Network Theory” that unlocks the power of groups in addressing challenges by bringing people together in small, high-powered teams to address a dilemma. Mr. Bickerstaff, Partner and Managing Director of M.M. Dillon LLC, and former CFO, Novartis Pharma AG, was first to sign the document and pledged full support of The Global Leaders.

The forum’s opening panel, moderated by Kathleen Sharp, contributor to The New York Times and author of Blood Feud, was to take a global view of healthcare and seek conclusions about world progress to date.  The picture is mixed, because, despite the enormous obstacles to providing affordable healthcare, on the horizon are potential breakthroughs; for example, new systems to help patients keep track of their own medical conditions.

Another panel was to feature former CEOs from four of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies: Jeff Kindler (Pfizer), Harry Kraemer (Baxter International), Robert G. Johnson, Jr., MD, PhD (Kosan Biosciences), and Myrtle Potter (Genentech, Inc.). The forum brought together leaders from around the world, who are associated with more than 25 countries, 60 industries and 750 companies, with collective financial power exceeding $1 trillion.

Details from the forum will be posted real-time on Twitter at @TGLeaders (#TGLHealth), and key findings and reports will subsequently be posted on www.TGLeaders.com.

The article Global Leaders Urge Solution to Nation’s Healthcare Crisis appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

In 2007 Canadian researchers of the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, reported they had found a cure for cancer. Evangelos Michelakis and his colleagues discovered that dichloroacetate (DCA), a common and basic drug already used to treat metabolic disorders, could be employed also for inhibiting the growth of tumors and for killing most types of cancer cells in humans.

Over the years the news of this discovery, after arousing initial interest and curiosity, has been ignored until the recent appearance of a post blog on the Web stating, “Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice,”  which drew attention and spread the news again. This post underlines the fact that major pharmaceutical companies have intentionally ignored the discovery for business reasons.

DCA is a safe and nontoxic drug, it leads cancer cells into self-destruction and consequent death thanks to the activation of apoptosis process by mitochondria, without effecting normal tissues, as it happens instead with patent anti-tumoral drugs produced until now which are focused on glycolysis method.

The reason why pharmaceutical companies are not interested in this “alternative” drug is only business. In fact DCA has no patent, so it can be employed widely and for a cost that is ridiculously low compared to other drugs produced by major drug companies.

“Big Pharma has no interest whatsoever in investing [in DCA research] because there will be no profit,” said Michelakis to Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

Diseases are sources of profit for pharmaceutical companies, which work like any other company, following the logic of business. The sale of drugs that cause many side effects brings the greatest profit. Cancer drugs are the ones which cause the highest number of side effects. Therefore they represent a huge business for drug companies, triggering a mechanism that could be also defined criminal, made by conflicts of interests, cynicism, cruelty and lies.

New generations of alternative methods would largely reduce the profit, for this reason companies don’t invest in research like the DCA one. “If DCA proves to be effective, then it will be a ridiculously cheap drug,” Michelakis said, highlighting the scarce possibilities to make profit on a drug like that.

“Without the promise of a reasonable profit, there is very little incentive for any company to develop new drugs,” explained Omudhome Ogbru, a pharmacologist R&D director at The Medicines Company in New Jersey.

The magazine Forbes classified pharmaceutical industry as the most lucrative of the world at the same level of oil industry. At so high of a business level it is not surprising that the conflicts of interests regulate choices in regards to health and ethics.

Various investigations and revelations have brought to light all the negative sides of the pharmaceutical sector. These include causation of new diseases to sell drugs, spread of epidemics in order to produce and distribute vaccines, reports on false research or falsification of data, censorship on inconvenient facts, and corruption and bribes to politicians, doctors and officials at international level.

This is all an interlacing of relations and a power game of enormous range where human life is worthless and only the money counts. Treat is better than cure for the “world’s health masters”.

The article Cancer Cure Found in Canada Ignored by Pharmaceutical Companies appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.