Prescription Drug Epidemic Spreads to Babies

Dr. Mary Newport sees the symptoms more and more in the babies she treats: oddly stiff limbs, severe tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, crying that never stops. The common denominator: Their mothers were taking prescription drugs, mostly painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, and antianxiety drugs like Xanax during pregnancy. Some of the moms had no idea these medications would hurt their developing babies — after all, it’s not like it’s heroin or cocaine, many think.

Glaxo To Book $2.4 billion To Settle Legal Cases, Including Avandia, Paxil

British Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline is expected to record a legal charge of $2.4 billion for the second quarter of this fiscal year in order to settle legal cases relating to its antidepressant Paxil and controversial diabetes pill Avandia. The British company announced two days ago that the money would be used not only to cover the settlements for Avandia but also other long-standing legal cases.

SSRIs Render Unfriendly Skies—FOIA documents reveal what FAA failed to consider in allowing pilots on antidepressants to fly

The SSRI antidepressant makers are desperate to find new customers, so they recently have been focusing on capturing groups for which the drugs were usually considered off limits. The latest marketing coup managed to open up sales to roughly 614,000 American pilots. Under a new policy announced on April 5, 2010, pilots diagnosed with depression can seek permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to take one of four SSRIs, including Eli Lilly’s Prozac, Pfizer’s Zoloft, and Forest Laboratories’ Celexa and Lexapro.

The Huffington Post—Life is Not a Mental Disorder

The Bible (or really any religious text) can be made to say and mean anything the author wishes. The “Bible” of psychiatry, that fabled and hoary text, the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders written by the American Psychiatric Association), is no different. Conceived as an instrument to identify and help heal disorders of the mind, it has morphed as to both form and function.

Pfizer Makes Bank from DrugsThat Can Kill You—To say Pfizers been accused of wrongdoing is like saying BP had an oil spill

The drug company Pfizer is best known for Lipitor, a drug that brings cholesterol down and Viagra, a drug that brings other things up. But the “world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company” which sits between Goldman Sachs and Marathon Oil on the Fortune 500, is also closely associated with a seemingly never-ending series of scandals.

CCHR International

News