You’re Fired: Forest Lab’s CEO May Be Banned from Federal Healthcare

As reported at Pharmalot, the CEO of Forest Laboratories received an unfortunate letter last week, demanding that he explain within 30 days why he should not be excluded from participation in federal healthcare programs. Banning Mr. Howard Solomon would prevent Forest from billing the government—every pharma company’s largest customer—and effectively end his over thirty-year tenure as CEO…The move to exclude Mr. Solomon apparently stems from Department of Justice accusations of fraud in 2009 related to Lexapro, an antidepressant. In a civil complaint, federal prosecutors alleged that Forest hid from parents and doctors the results of a study indicating that Lexapro might increase the risk of suicide in kids. Meanwhile, the complaint alleges, the company was promoting another clinical trial—financed by Forest, naturally—showing Lexapro’s effectiveness.

How Big Pharma’s Deceptive Advertising Helps Addict Patients, Screw Over Doctors and Jack Up Insurance Rates

All you knew about prescription drugs were creepy ads in a JAMA at the doctor’s office with a lot of fine print. Even if you knew the name of a drug, you’d never ask your doctor for it because that would be self-diagnosing and cheeky for a patient.

Flash forward to the late 1990s when direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, drug Web sites and online drug sales came on board, and self-diagnosing and demanding pills has become medicine-as-usual for the doctor/patient encounter.

The DTC/Web perfect storm didn’t just sell drugs like Claritin, Prozac and the Purple Pill, it sold the diseases to go with them like seasonal allergies, GERD and depression. It sold risk of diseases like heart events for which you’d take a statin like Lipitor, osteoporosis for which you’d take a bone drug like Boniva and asthma attacks for which you’d use a second asthma drug like Advair. Of course, by the very definition of prevention, you didn’t know if the drugs were working but you weren’t paying out of pocket anyway so what the hay…

Psychiatrists Want To Label Grief a Mental Disorder

Human grief could soon be diagnosed as a mental disorder under a proposal critics fear could lead to mood-altering pills being pushed for “mourning.”

Psychiatrists charged with revising the official “bible” of mental illness are recommending changes that would make it easier for doctors to diagnose major depression in the newly bereaved.

Mother Loses Custody of Teen For Refusing to Give Her Antipsychotics, Daughter Now Held in Psychiatric Ward

A Detroit mother lost custody of her daughter after refusing to give her antipsychotic medications, which officials say the teen may not need in the first place. Her mother, Maryanne Godboldo, was accused of medical neglect when her 13-year-old daughter, Ariana, began to have erratic symptoms following a series of vaccinations, and was given an antipsychotic drug by a center for at-risk youth. Godboldo felt that the drug, however, made her daughter worse, and began looking for holistic treatments instead. Child Protective Services then tried to remove Ariana from her home, resulting in a “stand-off” with a police SWAT team during which Godboldo reportedly fired a gun. Ariana is currently at a local psychiatric hospital, where officials say there is no “emergency need” to give her antipsychotic drugs. Even more disturbingly, Ariana has tested positive for an STD, which her father is saying is proof that she was sexually abused while she was at the hospital.

The Maryanne Godboldo question: When do parents have the right to shoot back against state-sponsored kidnappers?

The story of Maryanne Godboldo and how armed government agents broke down her door and attempted to kidnap her daughter because she wouldn’t feed her psychiatric drugs brings to light an important question: When is it justified to shoot back? I’ll explore both sides of this argument here and then share my own views. On the “shoot back” side of the argument, this woman had every right to defend herself against armed assailants who were engaged in acts of violence (breaking down her door) and who conspired to kidnap her daughter. In the legal world, the term “conspiracy” simply means more than one person was involved in planning the event. This was, without question, a conspiracy to kidnap a human being.

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