Defending the Commons

Who are your sponsors?

 Pharmaceuticals

 In 2004, the pharmaceutical industry had a global revenue of $550 billion (US). Among the top 10 selling companies worldwide are several of this symposium’s sponsors:

Pfizer ($46.13 billion)

GlaxoSmithKline ($31.38 billion)

Sanofi-Aventis ($30.92 billion)

Merck ($21.49 billion)

AstraZeneca ($21.43 billion)

Wyeth ($13.94 B)

In September 2004, Merck pulled its arthritis drug Vioxx off the market after a Food and Drug Administration study linked Vioxx to 27 000 sudden deaths and heart attacks in the between 1999 and 2003. Vioxx had been marketed in 80 countries and generated $2.5 billion in sales in 2003. The FDA, a government agency, tried to block the publication of the study.

 "The senior executives at Merck and the leadership at the FDA share responsibility for not having taken appropriate action and not recognizing that they are accountable for the public health. … Meanwhile, Merck was spending more than $100 million a year in direct-to-consumer advertising — another activity regulated by the FDA and a critical mechanism in building the 'blockbuster' status of a drug."

-          Dr. Eric Topal, The
New England Journal of Medicine

There is research showing that Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors such as Eli Lilly’s Prozac and GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil are connected to suicidal behaviour, and no more effective than a sugar pill.

 Drug companies do not have to publish study results that show that their drugs do not work, so they don’t.  Also, there is no requirement that clinical trials be conducted independently or that study reviewers have no financial ties with the companies. In June 2002, The New England Journal of Medicine dropped its policy of requiring authors of review articles of medical studies to have no financial ties to the manufacturers of the medicines being studied, because they could not find enough independent investigators.

 For more information, see the
Alliance for Human Research Protection: http://www.ahrp.org/