Could Paris Hilton Ever Be Happy?

Experimental philosopher Jonathan Philips reports on research conducted, with Luke Misenheimer and Joshua Knobe, on attributions of happiness. As he reports, they expected to find an evaluative component in people attributions of happiness that would otherwise to totally absent from their attributions of unhappiness. As he explains:

To investigate whether or not unhappiness had an evaluative component, participants were told about a woman named Maria who is described as a caring individual with a great family life and a variety of meaningful friendships and projects. Nonetheless, she feels terrible all the time and regards her life as fundamentally a failure.

Participants were then asked whether they agreed that Maria is unhappy. Not too surprisingly they agreed that Maria was unhappy despite having a good life. What this seems to show is that a person could be unhappy whether or not they have a good life.

We took a really similar approach to testing happiness. Maria is described as a vapid individual who has no real no goals beyond going to parties and gaining greater social status. Nonetheless, she enjoys her day-to-day activities and feels like there isn’t anything she would rather be doing with her life.

Participants were then asked whether they agreed that Maria is happy.

Surprisingly, participants disagreed! They reported that, despite Maria's positive mental states, she wasn't happy. This seems to suggest that the ordinary concept of happiness has an evaluative component that the concept of unhappiness does not.

Check out their very brief paper HERE.

See the Experimental Philosophy Blog Here.

The Sociology of Emotions

UCSB emeritus professor of sociology Thomas Scheff explores the place that emotion holds in cognition.

Daniel Dennett, John Haught, and David Sloan Wilson on Religion

Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University. Dennett is a noted atheist and secularist as well as being a prominent advocate of the Brights movement.

Dr. John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian and Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. His area of expertise is systematic theology, with a special interest in issues of science, cosmology, ecology, and reconciling evolution and religion. Haught established the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion. He is the author of several important books on the creation-evolution controversy, including Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, and Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution. A theistic evolutionist, Haught views science and religion as two different and noncompeting levels of explanation, asserting "Science and religion cannot logically stand in a competitive relationship with each other."

David Sloan Wilson (born 1949) is an American evolutionary biologist. Son of the author Sloan Wilson, David Sloan Wilson is a distinguished professor at Binghamton University. He is a prominent proponent of the concept of group selection (aka multi-level selection) in evolution. He has, along with Elliott Sober in their book Unto Others proposed a framework called multilevel selection theory, which incorporates the more orthodox approach of gene-level selection and individual selection. This framework argues that while genes serve as the means by which organisms' designs are transmitted across generations, individuals and groups are vehicles for those genes and both are arenas for genes to act on. Indeed, genes themselves can be affected by selection, not just because of their effects on the design of their vehicle (the organism) but also because of their effect on the functioning of the DNA on which they reside. Hence, the notion of multilevel selection. Wilson has also coined the concept of a trait-group, a group of organisms linked not permanently as a group but having a shared fate due to interactions that they have.

Poor Children Four Times More Likely to Be Given Anti-Psychotic Drugs

The New York Times reports:

New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.

Those findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?

The questions go beyond the psychological impact on Medicaid children, serious as that may be. Antipsychotic drugs can also have severe physical side effects, causing drastic weight gain and metabolic changes resulting in lifelong physical problems.

On Tuesday, a pediatric advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration met to discuss the health risks for all children who take antipsychotics. The panel will consider recommending new label warnings for the drugs, which are now used by an estimated 300,000 people under age 18 in this country, counting both Medicaid patients and those with private insurance.

Meanwhile, a group of Medicaid medical directors from 16 states, under a project they call Too Many, Too Much, Too Young, has been experimenting with ways to reduce prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs among Medicaid children.

They plan to publish a report early next year.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Senator Grassley to Expose Financial Conflicts of Interest of Major Professional Medical and Advocacy Groups

Alliance for Human Research Protection reports:

Senator Charles Grassley has set about to bring to public attention inexorable financial conflicts of interest that have rendered major professional medical and advocacy groups--including the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI, formerly the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)--into promoters of pharmaceutical products. Sen. Grassley has sent letters to these groups asking for detailed financial information.

Dr. H. Richard Lamb, a board member of NAMI since 2005, resigned, stating in his letter of resignation--which he sent to Sen. Grassley--that he was "shocked to learn that approximately half of NAMI's income comes from the large pharmaceutical companies." Furthermore, Dr. Lamb wrote that although NAMI officials assured him that this would change, "very little has changed, right up to the present day."

In an interview with Times reporter, Gardiner Harris, Dr. Lamb said that "NAMI's dependence on the drug industry made some actions impossible. For instance, Dr. Lamb said that NAMI should consider warning against the use of some mental health drugs with life-threatening side effects. But the organization could not consider such a move since doing so could threaten much of its funding."

NAMI's betrayal of trust is far more egregious that corporate crime: Pharmaceutical companies that have been caught failing to warn about life-threatening drug effects have paid billions of dollars in fines and criminal penalties.

NAMI presents itself as a patient advocacy organization: its tax exempt status depends on it being a not-for-profit organization. However, by giving priority to income from pharmaceutical companies to the life-safety of people diagnosed with mental illness--on whose behalf NAMI claims to speak-- misbrands NAMI, as shill for psychotropic drug manufactures, as a patient advocacy group.

In the spirit of full disclosure:
Many years ago, I resigned from the board of directors of NYS NAMI precisely because of the organization's shift from advocating for the human interests of patients to the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry and its handmaidens, the prescribing psychiatrists.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

SEE:
THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 7, 2009
Senator Grassley Seeks Financial Details From Medical Groups
By GARDINER HARRIS

17th International Transpersonal Conference

Announcing the

Seventeenth International Transpersonal Conference: Consciousness Revolution: Transpersonal Discoveries That Are Changing the World
Moscow, June 23; 27, 2010.

The mission of the Conference is to present, both experientially and didactically, breakthrough discoveries revealing the fundamental role of consciousness in all human affairs and the value for humanity of our growing insights into the nature of
consciousness and of the world. We want to review the role the transpersonal perspective has played in human history from the time of the first shamans 50.000 years ago to the discoveries of modern consciousness research, transpersonal psychology, and other scientific disciplines.

The Conference will present not only a comprehensive overview of the forty years of the transpersonal paradigm through the voices of its founders and pioneers, but also outline its future perspectives. The lasting legacy of this conference will be
several volumes documenting its proceedings in hundreds of papers by authors from many countries of the world, exploring the relevance of transpersonal research and ideas for science, politics, economy, ecology, religion, art, and other fields. We
hope to bring over 1000 participants from more than 50 countries, as well as numerous keynote speakers, artists, and spiritual teachers.

Cooperating Institutions:
International Transpersonal Association (ITA); European Transpersonal Association (EUROTAS); Association of Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy, Russia; Association of Body-Oriented Psychotherapists (Russia); Moscow Association of Analytical Psychology; John Fetzer Institute (to be confirmed); All-Russian Professional Psychotherapeutic League; Institute of Group and Family Psychology and Psychotherapy; Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP); California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS); John F. Kennedy University; Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS); Esalen Institute; Association of Transpersonal Psychology (ATP);

Cultural Program:
Festivals of Slavic, Buddhist, Indian, Russian Orthodox, Celtic, and shamanic music. World Festival of Transpersonal Arts (dance, instrumental music, chanting, paintings, sculptures, movies) Post-Conference Journey in Russia

Presenters:
Presenters from Outside of Russia:
Stanley Krippner; Duane Elgin; Max and Ellen Schupbach; Bronislav Vinogrodsky; Brother David Steindl-Rast; Dean Radin; Eduard Sagalaev; Olga Luchakova; Rajesh Dalal; Rick Tarnas; Silvia Nakkach; Wes Nisker; Yeshi Namkhai; Alex Key; Brant
Cortright; Ingo Jahrsetz; Harry Hunt; Kylea Taylor; Michael Murphy; Peter Russell; Pilot Baba; Tav Sparks; Amit Goswami; Jean Achterberg; Jenny Wade; Jim Garrison; Joseph Subbiondo; Karan Singh; Robert Frager; Stuart Sovatsky; Alex Grey; Tanna
Jakubowicz-Mount; Jim Fadiman; Tom Potterfield; Jai Uttal; Ralph Metzner; John Drew; Jorge Ferrer; Harris Friedman

Russian Presenters:
Eduard Sagalaev; Gennady Burbulis; Vadim Demchog; Vladimir Kozlov; Tonu Soidla; Vladimir Baskakov; Vladimir Maykov; Victor Petrenko; Arkady Rovner; Victor Makarov; Bronislav Vinogrodsky; Sergey Kluchnikov; Svyatoslav Ponomarev; Marina Belokurova;
Svetlana Doroganich; NikolayKudryashev; Slava Smirnov;Vladislav Kenga; German Karelsky; Dmitri Spivak; Igor Isaev; EvgenyKrupitsky; Zhana Drogalina; Evgeny Faydysh; Lev Teternikov; Igor Kalinauskas; Irina Kuris; KseniaKuleshova; Leonid Kroll; Alexander Kiselev

Organizing Committee
Drew John; Frager Robert; Friedman Harris; Grof Christina; Grof Stanislav; Hartelius Glenn; Karelsky Herman; Kozlov Vladimir; Kuleshova Ksenia; Lancaster Les; Luchakova Olga; Lukoff David; Malhotra Rajiv; Maykov Vladimir; Mindell Amy; Mindell Arny;
Murphy Dulce; Murphy Michael; Petrenko Victor; Rodriguez Vitor; Schmitz Steven; Sovatsky Stuart; Sparks Tav; Vinogorodsky Bronislav.

You can learn more about the Conference on its web site
www.ita2010.com
Please send any inquiries to itasecretary@gmail.com

Woman Leaps to Her Death in Psychotic State After Participating in Self-Development Group

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today on the case of Rebekah Lawrence -- a young women who entered a self-development course, The Turning Point, with the hope of finding happiness. Instead, she fell into a psychotic state and jumped naked from her office window to her death. The coroner in response recommended legal restrictions on the untrained practice of psychotherapy.

Read up on the case here.

Culture and Rituals of Eating

University of Minnesota anthropology department head William Beeman explains how eating together is a universal tradition around the globe and is used to bring people together. The customs that surround eating are part of a universal pattern of rituals that shape the human habit of eating together, because communal dining is more than just eating; it's an event full of transitions, both material and symbolic. And while table manners around the world might be different from one another, they all share the common bond of making the process of eating more focused on rituals and the gathering of people.

Parents Sue Harvard Over Son's Suicide

The Alliance for Human Research Protection reports:

Harvard University Health Services and its reliance on toxic, potentially lethal pharmacological interventions may finally come under judicial scrutiny.

The parents of 19 year old, John Edwards have filed a lawsuit charging Harvard College and the doctor responsible for supervising the nurse practitioner who prescribed multiple psychotropic drugs with causing the wrongful death of their son.

John Edwards was studying to become a doctor at Harvard College. After being prescribed a potentially lethal combination of psychoactive drugs by a nurse-practitioner at the school, he committed suicide in a bathroom at Harvard Medical School.

Each of the drugs prescribed for John Edwards, carries black box warnings: The labels of each of the two antidepressants prescribed, Prozac and Wellbutrin, warn about a twofold increased risk of suicide for those taking one of these drugs--the risk of taking both of these drugs in combination has not been tested for safety.

"Suicidality and Antidepressant Drugs - Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders."

See Prozac label:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2009/018936s089lbl.pdf
See Wellbutrin label:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2009/018644s039s040.pdf

The label of the acne drug, Accutane, carries black box warnings about birth defects and extensive, prominent (bold) warnings about serious psychiatric adverse effects:

"Accutane may cause depression, psychosis and, rarely, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, suicide, and aggressive and/or violent behaviors."

See p. 6 of label:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2008/018662s059lbl.pdf

The amphetamine, Adderral, which was also prescribed by the nurse-practitioner carries black box warnings about cardiac arrest.

See:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2007/011522s040lbl.pdf

The parents' attorney stated: "We're alleging that the supervising physician in this case did not do her job, which was to supervise the nurse who didn't have medical training that a physician has. She was writing prescriptions for powerful drugs that were inappropriate in this combination and are associated with an increase of suicide.''

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

Further Reading:

BOSTON GLOBE
Kin sue Harvard over son's suicideAllege negligence in health services' drug prescription

Antipsychotic Drugs, their Adverse Effects, and Tort Reform

by Peter R. Breggin, MD

There are many problems within our legal system that could benefit from reform. But within the area in which I have great experience as a psychiatric expert, so-called tort reform has already gone too far. It is already too difficult for injured patients or their surviving families to bring malpractice suits against physicians and health facilities, and product liability suits against drug companies, even when their cases have great merit. I believe in private health care and I believe in the free market, but liberty requires checks and balances. The right to sue medical practitioners and pharmaceutical companies provides a necessary control in our free market system, as well as a means for individuals to seek compensation and justice.

Harm Caused by Antipsychotic Drugs

For illustrative purposes, I'll focus on the newer antipsychotic drugs, the so-called atypicals, including Zyprexa, Risperdal, Geodon, Seroquel, and Abilify. These drugs produce horrendous adverse effects that often lead the victims or their surviving families to consider bringing lawsuits against doctors, health care facilities, or drug companies.

First, the antipsychotic drugs produce tardive dyskinesia. Tardive dyskinesia involves drug-induced abnormal movements that commonly disfigure patients and in some cases result in lifelong pain and total disability. The disorder frequently begins with out-of-control movements of the face, eyes, tongue, and mouth, including grimacing, chewing and tongue protruding. The muscles of the neck, torso, limbs, and fingers and toes can be involved. The ability to walk is often impaired. Speech, breathing, and swallowing can be afflicted. One variant called tardive dystonia results in agonizing muscle spasms, often leading to gross distortions in posture and gait. Another, tardive akathisia, causes neurological sensations that are excruciating and drive the patient to move about in an effort to relieve them. Some have been driven to suicide.

Tardive dyskinesia and its related disorders commonly begin to occur after only a few months or less of drug exposure and the risk accumulates over time. Rates for the older antipsychotic drugs are well demonstrated and reach or exceed 5% a year, cumulative. Fifteen percent or more of patients will develop tardive dyskinesia after three years of taking antipsychotic drugs. In the elderly tardive dyskinesia rates exceed a shocking 20% a year. With the newer drugs, the rates for developing tardive dyskinesia are said (by drug advocates) to be lower, but they remain very significant. In addition to innumerable cases of tardive dyskinesia in adults, I have also personally evaluated dozens of cases in children caused by the newer antipsychotic agents like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Abilify.

There is no effective treatment for tardive dyskinesia. Most cases are permanent and some worsen over time.

Tardive dyskinesia is especially insidious in onset because the drugs that cause tardive dyskinesia also mask or suppress the initial symptoms while the disease is developing. If the doctor does not carefully monitor and periodically stop the drug to check for the early development of tardive dyskinesia, a full-blown disabling case can develop before anyone realizes what has happened.

Second, the newer antipsychotics frequently cause diabetes and pancreatitis.

I have been a medical expert in fatal cases. Eli Lilly has paid more than one billion dollars in order to settle hundreds of diabetes cases related to Zyprexa without admitting any wrongdoing and without releasing their in-house safety data for public and professional scrutiny.

Third, these drugs also produce a potentially disastrous "metabolic syndrome" that includes elevated blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and severe obesity. They can also cause direct harm to the function of the heart. Overall, it's a prescription for cardiac disease and premature death. New studies in children have found astronomical rates of pathological obesity after only a few months exposure.

Fourth, these drugs cause gynecomastia--abnormal breast tissue growth and even milk secretion--in children and adults. A twelve-year-old boy can be devastated by the development of one or more large breasts. Sometimes these abnormal growths remain after the drug is stopped, and even recur after surgical removal. According to attorney Stephen Sheller, Risperdal and then Seroquel are the major offenders in his extensive experience with cases of gynecomastia.

Fifth, these drugs cause neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a potentially fatal disorder that mimics viral encephalitis.

For all of these disorders, patients and their families need to be warned about the risks and educated about how to identify early signs. Patients needed to be monitored and the drugs must be stopped at the earliest sign of one of these disorders. The need for the drugs, a rational treatment plan, and patient consent should be documented in the medical record. Unfortunately, physicians too often fail to meet these standards while cavalierly prescribing these dangerous agents to adults and, at times, to small children.

And that's only the beginning of the list of disastrous adverse effects caused by antipsychotic drugs. I believe these drugs would be outlawed in a rational society, especially for children. Instead, the FDA has recently been expanding their use in children.

Ironically, the FDA is approving these drugs for use in children at the same time that the Justice Department has been fining drug companies for illegally marketing these drugs to children. The illegal marketing corrupted and contaminated medical practice, encouraging physicians to prescribe off label, eventually leading the FDA to then approve off label prescribing. The studies used to justify this approval have been wholly developed and supervised by these same drugs companies using handpicked doctors who have often been involved in encouraging off label use. Drug companies commonly ghostwrite the research publications that appear under the names of these doctors.

The Difficulty of Bringing Lawsuits

Although many millions of people are seriously harmed each year by the so-called antipsychotic drugs, relatively few victims are able to bring malpractice or product liability suits. Since the drugs work by producing a chemical lobotomy, patients who remain medicated are too apathetic to complain or even to recognize their abnormal movements. Even when they stop taking the drugs, and become more aware of their impaired condition, most remain unable to find an attorney to take their case. On a weekly basis, I receive calls from injured individuals asking me to evaluate their cases or to refer them to attorneys. Often the news for them is discouraging.
Click here to read more.

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York. The facts about tardive dyskinesia are presented in detail with hundreds of scientific references in Dr. Breggin's book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock, and the Psychopharmaceutical Complex, second edition (2008). Dr. Breggin's book, Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Murder (2008) describes cases of tardive dyskinesia and many of his experiences as a medical expert. Dr. Breggin's most recent book is Wow, I'm an American! How to Live Like Our Heroic Founders (2009).

NPR's Science Friday: The Science of Clinical Psychology

NPR's Science Friday with host Ira Flatow will feature a segment, The Science of Clinical Psychology, that will broadcast Friday, December 4th, 2009.

Description:

How solid is the science behind clinical psychology? A group of practitioners suggests a new accreditation system for clinical psychological research training programs may be necessary to help ensure that the methods used by clinical psychologists are up-to-date and backed by scientific research. Not everyone agrees that approach is warranted, however. We'll talk about it.

Guests
Richard McFall
Executive Director, Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Indiana University, Bloomington
Bloomington, Indiana

Bruce Wampold
Professor and Chair, Department of Counseling Psychology
Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Madison, Wisconsin

CHECK IT OUT HERE

Big Pharma's Crime Spree

Alliance for Human Research Protection reports:

BIG PHARMA'S CRIME SPREE is a riveting report by David Evans in the current
issue of Bloomberg Markets Magazine relying on recent criminal legal
settlements. It leaves no doubt about the fact that Big Pharma's buiness
practices are defined by criminal activities. Finding cures is not even
remotely a consideration for this industry, as it would present a financial
conflict of interest.

shorter version:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a4yV1nYxCGoA&pos=10

"Across the U.S., pharmaceutical companies have been pleading guilty to criminal charges or paying penalties in civil cases when the U.S. Department of Justice finds that they deceptively marketed drugs for unapproved uses, putting millions of people at risk of chest infections, heart attacks, suicidal impulses or death. Since May 2004, Pfizer, Eli Lilly & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and four other drug companies have paid a total of $7 billion in fines and penalties. Six of the companies admitted in court that they marketed medicines for unapproved uses."

"About 15% of drug sales in the U.S. are for unapproved uses without adequate evidence the medicines work." The widespread off-label promotion of drugs for untested, unapproved uses is a manifestation of a health-care system that is dysfunctional as it is costly. Americans are paying exorbitant prices for drugs that put their lives at increased risk of death. Indeed, a conservative estimate by the
Institute of Medicine (2000) is 106,000 preventable deaths from non-error adverse prescription drug effects.

In September 2007, New York-based Bristol- Myers paid $515 million-without admitting or denying wrongdoing-to federal and state governments in a civil lawsuit brought by the Justice Department. The six other companies pleaded guilty in criminal cases.

The evidence is inescapable: "Marketing departments of many drug companies don't respect any boundaries of professionalism or the law," says Jerry Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Indeed, rather than having a deterrent effect, the number of Big Pharma high profile criminal settlements is increasing and the settlements are getting bigger.

Bloomberg documents how companies such as Pfizer and Eli Lilly--each has been prosecuted repeatedly for the same crimes--are, if anything, emboldened as repeat offenders--ignoring FDA admonitions, as well as promises made to the Department of Justice not to break the law.

In January, 2004, "the Pfizer unit, Warner-Lambert, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of marketing a drug for unapproved uses. New York-based Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million in criminal fines and civil penalties, and the company's lawyers assured prosecutor Michael Loucks and three other prosecutors that Pfizer and its units would stop promoting drugs for unauthorized purposes. What Loucks, who's now acting U.S. attorney in Boston, didn't know until years later was that Pfizer managers were breaking that pledge not to practice so-called offlabel marketing even before the ink was dry on their plea."

"Jeff Kindler, who became Pfizer's general counsel in 2002, supervised the lawyers who made the promises to prosecutors. By 2004, Kindler increased the compliance budget 12-fold."

"What Pfizer's lawyers didn't tell the prosecutors was that Pfizer was at that moment running an off-label marketing promotion using more than 100 of its salespeople" who were pitching Bextra for pain, a use the FDA explicitly forbade Pfizer to promote! In 2001, the FDA had rejected Pfizer's application to market Bextra for pain because in clinical trials the drug had shown it could cause heart damage and death.

In her guilty plea (March 30, 2009), Mary Holloway, a Pfizer regional sales manager for the Northeastern US, acknowledged that her team promoted Bextra to doctors without disclosing the risks, and also acknowledged that her team "had solicited hospitals to create protocols to buy Bextra for the unapproved purpose of acute pain relief. Her representatives didn't mention the increased risk of heart attacks in their marketing..."

Kindler became chief executive officer in 2006. In Pfizer's ethics guide, he says stories about misbehaving companies and executives abound. "Pfizer truly stands apart," he says. "I am proud of our record."

Instead of being held accountable for criminal marketing practices Pfizer and its corporate divisions engaged in, on Oct. 1, Kindler was elected to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

ESCALATING PENALTIES
Includes criminal fines and civil penalties. Source: Court records

RAP SHEET
Pharmaceutical companies paid about $7 billion in fines or penalties for
illegal off-label marketing during the past five years. Here are some of the
biggest.

COMPANY DATE OF PENALTY DRUG(S) Amount MILLIONS

Pfizer September 2009 Bextra, others
$2,300.
Lilly January 2009 Zyprexa
1,415.
Serono October 2005 Serostim
704.
Purdue May 2007 Oxycontin
634.
Cephalon September 2008 Actiq, Gabitril, Provigil
425.
Schering-Plough August 2006 Temodar, Intron A
435.
Pfizer (Warner-Lambert) May 2004 Neurontin
430.

Source: Bloomberg / Federal court records

The amounts of Eli Lilly's fines and penalties have soared during the past 25 years.

$25,000 APRIL 1985: Pleads guilty to 25 misdemeanors for misbranding
Oraflex.
$36,000,000 DECEMBER 2005: Pleads guilty to one misdemeanor count for
misbranding Evista.
$1,415,000,000 JANUARY 2009: Pleads guilty to one misdemeanor count for
misbranding Zyprexa.don't

But those fines are tiny compared to the revenues from criminally marketed
sales:
Eli Lilly Zyprexa sales from criminal marketing yielded the company $36
billion from 2000 to 2008.

And Pfizer's recent $2.3 billion settlement in fines and penalties for the illegal marketing of Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox and Lyrica pales in comparison to the $16.8 billion the company garnered from its criminal marketing of these drugs. Indeed, the total penalties Pfizer has paid in settlements--$2.75 billion, since 2004--is but 1% of the company's revenue of $245 billion from 2004 to 2008.

Dr. Avorn points out that "The Pfizer and Lilly cases involved the illegal promotion of drugs that have been shown to cause substantial harm and death to patients."

Despite the fact that in five company-sponsored clinical trials, 31 people out of 1,184 participants died after taking Zyprexa for dementia-twice the death rate for those taking a placebo--Lilly aggressively marketed the drug for off-label use in children and the elderly.

Even more shameful than the pharmaceutical industry's blatant criminal practices, drug companies "find ready and willing partners in physicians"
who wantonly prescribe dangerous drugs for untested, off-label uses for cash
kickbacks.

Bloomberg reports that "Pfizer's marketing program offered doctors up to $1,000 a day to allow a Pfizer salesperson to spend time with the physician and his patients." If profits "uber ales" is the overriding goal, and human casualties are viewed as so much shrapnel, then Big Pharma has been hugely successful-billions in sales and hundreds of thousands buried.

In 2004, Neurontin sales reached $2.12 billion-- according the prosecutors' sentencing memo, 94% of those sales came from off-label use.

Much like the large financial institutions, Big Pharma companies are shielded by the rationale, "too big to fail." The government is reluctant to use the ultimate sanction which would put an end to criminal marketing-namely, a felony conviction that would render a company's drugs ineligible for reimbursement by state health programs and the federal government.

However, "a legal fig leaf" allows a parent company (such as Pfizer) to continue to receive government federal reimbursement for hazardous drugs that have been criminally marketed--even as one after another of the company's subsidiaries has pleaded guilty.

Pfizer and its executives have thus successfully avoided criminal culpability while paying the settlements but maintaining that it was not responsible for the illegal actions of the dozens of companies it acquired--actions that continued after Pfizer acquired them:

Bloomberg reports: "From 1995 to 2005, Pfizer purchased more than 20 companies. Since 2004, companies that are now Pfizer divisions have pleaded guilty to off-label marketing of two drugs. Pfizer continued off-label promotions for these medications after buying the firms, according to Pfizer's Sept. 2 guilty plea and FDA correspondence with Pfizer.

Pfizer first stepped into an off-label scheme in 1999, when it offered to buy Morris Plains, New Jersey-based Warner-Lambert Co. Prosecutors charged that Warner-Lambert marketed Neurontin off-label between 1995 and 1999.
Warner-Lambert admitted doing so for one year in a May 2004 guilty plea for
which Pfizer paid $430 million in fines and penalties."

Despite all this, "Pfizer maintains its good standing with such agencies because its subsidiaries, Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia-Upjohn, and not the corporation itself, entered the guilty pleas to felony charges."

While Big Pharma executives have evaded justice, Scott Harkonen, one former CEO of a small company, InterMune, has been convicted of illegal marketing of its only drug, Actimmune, for uses not approved by the FDA. He's out on bail, awaiting sentencing.

"As prosecutors continue to uncover patterns of deceit in off-label marketing by pharmaceutical companies, millions of patients across the nation remain in the dark."

Doctors have become pill pushers who blindly prescribe the latest, most expensive medications based on deceptive marketing by drug company salesmen.

The result is documented in hundreds of thousands of preventable drug-induced deaths, and unsustainable healthcare expenditure. What's especially disturbing is that nowhere in the proposed healthcare reform bills are life-threatening crimes by pharmaceutical companies in collusion with doctors who abuse their medical prescribing licenses even addressed.

Expanded Bloomberg Market Magazine version with tables, side-bars, upon request

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974