Subject: yardstick

From: Caroline <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 11:12:00 +0300

Word Is Out, Big News Monday!

Score One Inc.
SREA
$0.20 UP 33.3%

This week's news has already been pushing SREA up. Word is out a BIG
news release is expected Monday! Keep your eyes open and get on SREA
Monday!

The blood thinner Coumadin is another example. That's the only way we
have of getting companies to change their behavior. GRAHAM:  I don't
know what Congress will do in the end.

It's the same thing with labeling for physicians.
Yet what we are concerned about is equally problematic, far subtler, and
largely hidden from sight. I don't think that people come away with it
and they certainly don't come away with any sense of how likely it is to
happen because the visual image overpowers anything that gets said.
Look at the funding on the major committees, the Health, Education,
Labor and Pension Committee in the Senate or the Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee in the House. Medical mistakes are therefore
viewed as a failure of character and any error equals negligence. I can
vouch for that from personal experience.

Should I lay it on the line and tell them the way it really is or do I
kind of downplay it? We've got to try to approve this drug.

My conscience is formed by the voice of Christ speaking internally to
me. You know, Republicans versus Democrats, the left versus the right,
conservatives versus liberals. Are they consciously cheating and
manipulating the data and everything else?

A company may come in with a drug and want to get it approved for five
different indications.
It turns out that most of these adverse reactions are actually what are
expected in the sense that they are an extension of the drug's action.

My hope is that they will act decisively to reform the FDA and make the
American people safer by having strong post-marketing. It helped to rev
the market up to get people to want to use the drug.

MANETTE:  Did your faith as a devout Roman Catholic play any role in the
decisions you made to put your career on the line to report the truth?
Now, is that optimal? And it's all because of this little pill that
they're taking.

All the other drugs are no better than placebo.
With the SSRI and antidepressants what the FDA should have insisted on
was a signed informed consent at the time a child was going to be
treated. I thought that the most interesting of his remarks focused on
the context of pharmaceutical marketing to physicians in the greater
world of business practice in this country. They're hoping that I'll
just become very frustrated and disillusioned and leave or that I'll
slip up in some way so that they can take some sort of action against
me. GRAHAM:  It did in so far as my faith forms my conscience. It's sort
of my sense of what's right and what's wrong and what I am and am not
responsible for.

The philanthropy that was once present in modern medicine has been
replaced by a love of money, which gave rise to an elaborate system of
bribery, conflict of interest and deception. I'd be beating myself up
because my conscience would condemn me. There is a lot of room for more
policing of the professions. They need to compare drug products against
other drugs that treat the same indication rather than comparing a drug
against a sugar pill. Or have they skimped on tests if ordering too many
shrinks their paycheck? If a drug is so bad that they can't find a
reason to approve it, they won't. If you put it somewhere else they're
going to eventually become co-opted the way the FDA has been co-opted.

That's the only way we have of getting companies to change their
behavior. Our entire system is in desperate need of revamping. On The
Take by Jerome P Kassirer M.
It might be that the average American, given all the data, all the
facts, and all the information in an objective way could make an
intelligent, rational decision.
It turns out that most of these adverse reactions are actually what are
expected in the sense that they are an extension of the drug's action.

I knew what was right. They should be beating on the doors of the FDA
demanding change.

In the future what we need to do is just take the risks and look hard
and dispassionately at what the real benefits are.

She feels this is a practice which "threatens to corrupt the profession
and cost lives of many patients. So they pressure the FDA and the FDA
gets the message. MANETTE:  Have your peers turned against you?
That's very difficult and it is a little bit discouraging. We see
wonderful ads of people demonstrating their health, whether they're
skating across the ice or doing their Tai chi. That's why they make so
much money and that's why the drug companies go to them to sell their
products. Does that influence their judgment in the end?

Direct-to-consumer advertising is part of what made Vioxx a blockbuster
drug. Nor do I see the subsidization of education as appropriate.
Yet, what we're talking about is public health and public health is
nonpartisan. GRAHAM:  Well, where would you put it?
It's not a wonderful system.