Telegraph

By Matthew Day in Warsaw

Last updated: 11:17 PM BST 02/07/2008

Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus.
A person is given an injection: Homeless people die after bid flu vaccine trial in Poland
21 people died after being given the vaccine

The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.

Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug.

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An ABC News and Washington Times Investigation Reveals Vets Are Being Recruited for Government Tests on Drugs with Violent Side Effects

By BRIAN ROSS and VIC WALTER

June 17, 2008 —

Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, an investigation by ABC News and The Washington Times has found.

The report will air on Good Morning America and will also appear in The Washington Times on Tuesday. (click here to read "The Washington Times" coverage of "Disposable Heroes")

In one of the human experiments, involving the anti-smoking drug Chantix, Veterans Administration doctors waited more than three months before warning veterans about the possible serious side effects, including suicide and neuropsychiatric behavior.

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America's Medicated Army

Seven months after sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad's dangerous roads — acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them — he found himself growing increasingly despondent. "We'd been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me," LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting Iraqi police stations targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, hunting down mortars hidden in dark Baghdad basements and cleaning up its own messes. He recalls the order his unit got after a nighttime firefight to roll back out and collect the enemy dead. When LeJeune and his buddies arrived, they discovered that some of the bodies were still alive. "You don't always know who the bad guys are," he says. "When you search someone's house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there's little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor — things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they would."

So LeJeune visited a military doctor in Iraq, who, after a quick session, diagnosed depression. The doctor sent him back to war armed with the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam. "It's not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they're having over there for a variety of reasons," LeJeune says. "If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills."

While the headline-grabbing weapons in this war have been high-tech wonders, like unmanned drones that drop Hellfire missiles on the enemy below, troops like LeJeune are going into battle with a different kind of weapon, one so stealthy that few Americans even know of its deployment. For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines. Data contained in the Army's fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say.

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Fox News Jokes About Killing Obama

Added: May 25, 2008 (Less info)
While commenting on Hillary's RFK gaffe, Liz Trotta on Fox News Channel first referred to Barack Obama as "Osama" and then laughed that they should both be killed.


Email people at Bayer's "Investor Relations" section and let them know whether we feel like investing in a company that helps prop up Faux "news".

http://www.investor.bayer.com/en/funktionsnavigation/kontakt/ir-team/

***Sign the Petition to Have Liz Trotta Fired***

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/fox-news-has-to-sack-liz-trotta

Bayer (rather heavily) advertises it's pain reliever Aleve on Faux "news".

Perhaps if a FEW ADVERTISERS were made examples...

http://aleve.com/emailus.html

Hit 'em Where it Hurt$: Contact FoxNews Advertisers

FDA Puts Medical Test Subjects in Danger

By Sonia Shah

May 19, 2008

Now that 80 percent of clinical trials fail to recruit sufficient numbers of test subjects on deadline, drug companies increasingly export their trials to developing countries, where sick, undertreated patients abound. It's faster, it's cheaper and it's easier to conduct the placebo-controlled trials that companies and the FDA prefer. There is precious little oversight of these trials. Unlike for domestic trials, the FDA does not require advance notice before drug companies take their trials outside US borders. And with 90 percent of trials failing to gain FDA approval, a massive number of trials are conducted, fail and then vanish with no agency review at all--and little public record, if any. Until now, the FDA's sole requirement for these overseas trials is that they adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki (or local rules, on the off chance that they are more stringent). Signed by the United States and thirty-four other countries in 1975, the Declaration of Helsinki consists of several dozen pithy principles to govern ethical research on humans, and is widely considered the gold standard in research ethics. Crafted and updated by the World Medical Association, a group representing dozens of national physicians' organizations from around the globe, the Declaration of Helsinki (DOH) urges voluntary informed consent, the use of independent committees to review and oversee trials, that investigators prioritise their subjects' well-being, that research subjects be assured access to the best health interventions identified in trials and that their societies enjoy a "reasonable likelihood" of benefiting from the results of trials.

It's not a perfect document. It's very short. It's a little vague. The FDA does not bother to enforce it. Even when they know of infractions--such as in Pfizer's trial of the antibiotic Trovan in Nigeria, which not only failed to procure informed consent but didn't even have an oversight committee in place at the time of the trial--the FDA has done nothing and approved the drug anyway. We know of that particular trial's violations only because the Washington Post exposed them several years later. In researching a book I wrote on clinical trials in developing countries, I similarly found many examples of trials clearly in violation of Helsinki provisions that were nevertheless reviewed and approved by the FDA.

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Update
Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay

Related
Merck Wins Reversal of Jury's $32 Million Vioxx Award (Update2) 


Eli Lilly breaks with drug industry over doctor-payment disclosure bill

By Jeffrey Young

Posted: 05/13/08 07:29 PM [ET]

Pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. broke with the drug industry and endorsed a Senate bill that would require disclosure of industry payments and gifts to physicians.

The drug industry has been ambivalent about a federal “sunshine law,” which sets Lilly’s strategy apart.

After months of talks with Lilly and others, Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Aging Committee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) on Tuesday unveiled a revised version of legislation they originally put out last September.

“Eli Lilly deserves credit for its endorsement of the Sunshine Act and the leadership role it is taking for greater transparency in the pharmaceutical industry,” said Grassley, who noted he also had the support of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

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