Email: AstraZeneca Official Praises Doctor For "Great 'smoke-and-mirrors' job!"

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

In an email included in court documents, an official for a pharma giant praises a physician for helping in a coverup.
The company official said of the physician, "Lisa has done a great 'smoke-and-mirrors job!'"

Drug Maker’s E-Mail Released in Seroquel Lawsuit
By DUFF WILSON New York Times
Published: February 27, 2009

AstraZeneca “buried” unfavorable studies of its $4.4 billion blockbuster psychiatric drug Seroquel, according to internal documents released Friday in a legal dispute between the company and lawyers for thousands of people who sued the company because they said the drug caused diabetes and weight gain.

In one of the documents, a 1997 e-mail message, Richard Lawrence, an AstraZeneca official, praised Lisa Arventis, the company’s Seroquel project physician at the time, for minimizing adverse findings in a “cursed” study. He wrote: “Lisa has done a great ‘smoke-and-mirrors job!’ ”

“AstraZeneca knew about the risk of weight gain and diabetes in 2000 and not only failed to warn physicians and patients but marketed in a way that represented there was no risk,” Edward F. Blizzard, a Houston-based lead lawyer on the cases, said in a conference call with reporters.

...In another e-mail message, John Tumas, the company’s publications manager, wrote in 1999:
“The larger issue is how do we face the outside world when they begin to criticize us for suppressing data.”
He said three drug trials had been “buried.” Referring to a fourth, he said, “We must find a way to diminish the negative findings.
But, in my opinion, we cannot hide them.”

...more at the link

So we can expect the Pharma to cover up what they do, and only if someone manages to catch
them red handed do we hear these stories.

There needs to be more oversight and regulation, in order to stem this sort of risk to the public.

[Warpy]

1. I've hated that company like poison for years

They had a blockbuster drug, Prilosec, the first of a series of proton pump inhibitor drugs that worked miracles for GERD, a drug developed not by AZ but by pure research at the university level.

17 years later, their patent was about to be up and a competitor was licensed to produce a generic. Astrazeneca fought tooth and nail to delay that generic, slapping them with lawsuit after lawsuit for really silly issues surrounding formulation, pills versus capsules, that kind of thing. When they ran out of lawsuits, they marketed a "me too" second generation copy of the drug they called Nexium and fought for--and got--the ability to sell Prilosec for peanuts OTC.

That nearly crippled the company that was licensed to produce the generic between multiple lawsuits over several years followed by underselling it OTC to the point the company could never manage to recoup its losses by producing the prescription formula.

They've won my prize for the most vicious, predatory, anti patient company in the whole Big Pill panoply of vicious, predatory, anti patient companies.

I'm not a bit surprised they've been caught fudging data. I just think it's a little amazing it's taken this long.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

2. AstraZeneca's commercial advertisements

always seem a little too slick for me. Too produced and slick, like they're trying to hide something, especially with the comments on some of their commercials: "if you can't afford your drugs, AstraZeneca wants to help..." It always makes them sound like money is being thrown at their image to hide the fact that they're a nasty company.

[Why Syzygy]

3. sigh

:grr:

[Celebration]

4. recommended n/t

[flyingobject]

5. Im shocked, shocked I tell ya. n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. That looks very ugly

Did the Florida judge, Anne C. Conway, have access to the emails? If so, I'd like to hear why she thought she could base her judgement on lack of evidence of the diabetes cause, if it was known studies were suppressed.

[Ocracoker16]

7. The lesson here extends to all drug companies

Unfortunately, Astra Zeneca is not the first company to hide evidence that one of their products causes severe health problems. Eli Lilly manufactures Zyprexa which is in the same drug class as Seroquel. They are both atypical antipsychotics. Lilly lied about the fact that it caused diabeties and other metabolic disorders. Not to mention rapid weight gain. So Lilly was the subject of many lawsuits and they were forced to pay tons of money to those who had developed those conditions after taking the medicine. Lawsuits were filed against the makers of Seroquel and other atypical antipsychotics soon after.

[Why Syzygy]

8. You're lucky is you live through one of Lily's trials.

That nasty little side effect, suicide is no problem for Lily. At least they had TRIALS. :sarcasm:

Especially Lilly who agreed to pay $1.42 billion for illegal marketing of its anti-psychotic Zyprexa last month--$615 million for criminally promoting it for dementia--another $62 million to 32 states for illegal pediatric marketing and agreed to resolve Medicaid fraud investigations into "rebates" at the same time.
~snip
Starting with the death of 19-year-old Cymbalta test subject Traci Johnson in 2004--who hanged herself in the Lilly Clinic in Indianapolis and had no history of mental problems--it has been beset by reports of baffling, rapid, unprovoked, and out of character suicides.
~snip
At the American Academy of Pain Medicine Annual Meeting in January, Lilly presented a study by its own doctors finding Cymbalta was superior to placebo in knee pain--in keeping with its penchant to publish studies by Lilly funded and Lilly employed doctors saying Cymbalta is safe.

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/127393/pharma_giant_looking_for_new_diseases_to_treat_with_drug_linked_to_suicide/?page=entire

[varkam]

9. Not much new here, really.

Pharmaceutical companies aren't moral actors - if they think that they can make a profit by pushing a flawed product to market (and run the risk of incurring liability) then they're going to do it, what is right be damned.