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The ten worst practices of the pharmaceutical industry, according to Ben Goldacre
The British disseminator denounces in his book "Bad Farma" the irregular behaviors of pharmaceuticals.
The concealment of the negative results costs many lives every year, denounces in their book.
1. 90% of published clinical trials are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry .This is the main reason why the entire clinical trial system is altered, according to Goldacre, and by which the rest of the problems occur.
2. The negative results are systematically hidden from society."We should start a record of all clinical trials, ask people to register their study before starting and insist that they publish their results at the end."In many cases, the author of "Mala Farma" denounces, pharmacists reserve the right to interrupt an essay and if they do not give the expected result, they stop it.They also force scientists who participate in these studies to keep the results secret.And this practice occasionally has dramatic consequences.In the 90s, for example, an essay was performed with a substance created against cardiac arrhythmias called Lorcainida.100 patients are selected and half of them took a placebo.Among those who took the substance there were up to 9 deaths (compared to 1 from the other group), but the results were never published because the pharmacist stopped the process.A decade later, another company had the same idea but this time it put the lorcainida in circulation.According to Goldacre, up to 100,000 people died unnecessarily before someone realized the effects.The researchers who had done the first essay apologized to the scientific community for not having brought to light the results. "Only half of the essays are published," writes Goldacre, "and those who have negative results have twice the most possibilitiesIf positive is lost.
3. Pharmacists manipulate or make up the results of the trials.They are not beneficial to health.Goldacre lists a multitude of small traps that are performed on a daily basis to put a medicine in the market, such as choosing the effects of the substance in a subgroup when the expected results have not been obtained in the group that was sought at the beginning.
4. The results are not replicable."In 2012," writes Goldacre, "a group of researchers reported in the Nature magazine of their attempt to replicate 53 studies for early cancer treatment: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated."
5. The ethics committees and regulators have failed us .According to Goldacre, the European and American authorities have taken measures before the constant complaints, but the inoperance has turned these measures into false solutions.Regulators refuse to give information to society with the excuse that people outside theAgency could misuse or misunderstand the data.Inoperance leads to situations like the one that happened with the Rosiglitazone.By 2011, WHO and the GSK company had news of the possible relationship of this medicine and some heart problems, but they did not make it public.In 2007, a cardiologist discovered that it increased the risk of cardiac problems by 43% and did not get out of the market until 2010.
6. Medications children who only have adult authorization are prescribed .This was the case of the antidepressant Paroxetine.The GSK company, according to Goldacre, knew of its adverse effects on minors and allowed it to continue recipe by not including any warning.The company knew how to increase the number of suicides among minors who took it and a notice was not made to the medical community until 2003.
7. Clinical trials are carried out with the most disadvantaged groups .Pharmaceuticals have often been discovered using illegal vagrants or immigrants for their essays.We are creating a society, writes, where medications are only rehearsed in the poor.In the US, for example, Latinos are offered as volunteers up to seven more times to obtain medical coverage and a good part of clinical trials are moving to countries like China or India where it is cheaper.An essay in the US costs $ 30,000 per patient, explains Goldacre, and in Romania comes out for 3,000.
8. Conflicts of interest are produced : Many of the representatives of the patients belong to organizations generously financed by pharmaceuticals.Some of the managers of the regulatory agencies end up working for large pharmaceuticals in a rather dark relationship.
9. The industry distorts the beliefs of doctors and replace marketing tests .Pharmaceuticals, Goldacre denounces, are spent thousands of millions every year to change the decisions made by doctors when it comes to rejecting a treatment.In fact, companies spend double in marketing and advertising than in research and development, a distortion that we pay in the price of medicines.Tactics range from the well -known influence of medical visitors (with invitations to trips, congresses and luxurious hotels) to more sibylin techniques such as the publication of clinical trials whose sole objective is to publicize the product among many doctors who participate in the process.Many of the patient associations that negotiate in the institutions to request regulations receive generous subsidies from certain pharmaceutical companies.
10. The criteria for approved medications are a strainer .Regulators should require a medicine to be better than the best available treatment, but what happens, according to Goldacre, is that most of the time it is enough that the company proves that it is better than any treatment at all.A 2007 study showed that only half of the medications approved between 1999 and 2005 were compared to other existing medications.The market is flooded with medications that do not seek any benefit, according to the author of "Mala Farma", or versions of the same medicine by another company (the medicines "me too) or versions of the same laboratory when prescribed the patent (the medicines"I again "). In this last category, the case of the Omeprazol stomach, of Astrazeneca, which took the market with similar effects, esoprazole, but ten times more expensive stands out.
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