Freelance writer and
cartoonist Martha Rosenberg has worked diligently to reveal the conflict of
interest in many of the pharma/medical  situations.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Grassley-Investigates-Lill-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100224-629.html

Grassley Investigates Lilly/WebMD link Reported by Washington
Post

By Martha Rosenberg (about the
author)     Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Martha Rosenberg – Writer

It is
not too hard to find evidence of links between WebMD and drug giant Eli
Lilly.

A 2002 article on the gigantic medical site about pain and
depression says “Lilly is a WebMD Partner,” and an advertising award in 2004
went to the FCB “client” Eli Lilly & Co./WebMD–not clients.

Banner
and skyscraper ads for Lilly‘s blockbuster antidepressant Cymbalta on WebMD‘s
home page never seemed to yield to other advertisers in 2009–and the Washington

Post reported Lilly and WebMD to be partners in 2000.

Now Sen. Charles
Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is
investigating financial ties between Lilly and WebMD Health Corp because of a

WebMD TV ad exhorting people to undergo a Lilly depression screening.

You
can joke about the need to tell people they are depressed–do people need to be
told they have a headache?–but pharma’s screening ruse to recruit new
patient pools for the volatile drugs among teens, adolescents and new mothers is
not funny.

3,500 news articles about antidepressant linked violence
appear on the web site, SSRIstories.com, including 700 murders, 200
murder-suicides, 51 school shooting incidents and 54 postpartum depression cases
since 1989.

In addition to WebMD, WebMD Health Corp. includes the web
sites Medscape, MedicineNet, eMedicine, eMedicine Health, RxList, theHeart.org,
and drugs.com. Original partners and investors says the Washington Post included
“Microsoft, DuPont, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (and his Fox TV networks),
Silicon Graphics and Netscape founder Jim Clark, drug maker Eli Lilly, and EDS,
the computer services company founded by H. Ross Perot.”

Lilly is not the
only pharma company receiving unmarked product placement on WebMD.

Last
summer, a video featured a woman patient confessing she was fearful of life
while a voice over said she needed treatment for “general anxiety disorder” and
the camera showed bottles of Forest Pharmaceuticals’ antidepressant
Lexapro moving down the manufacturer’s assembly line. Get it? No disclaimer
on the video or “sponsored content” appeared.

Another unsponsored WebMD

video last summer urged people on antidepressants to remain on their therapy
“despite side effects” and a third suggested women concerned about cancer, heart
attack and stroke risks of postmenopausal hormone therapy should continue their
treatment at lowered doses. Hang in there, valued customers.

A search for
Wyeth (now Pfizer) antidepressant Effexor a few months ago on WebMD elicited a
JAMA study finding Effexor superior to other antidepressants by a Wyeth funded
second author, Graham Emslie, MD. Effexor was the drug Andrea Yates took when
she drowned her five children in 2001, a case found on
SSRIstories.

Questions about conflict of interest have surfaced at
WebMD‘s Medscape too which administers many of the lucrative drug company
sponsored continuing medical education [CME] courses in the US which doctors
must complete to keep their state licenses.

Last year psychiatrist Daniel
Carlat, MD–who recounts his adventures as a Wyeth paid Effexor promoter in the
New York Times magazine–writes that he received, as a member of Medscape, an
envelope with “a brochure from Forest Laboratories advertising Lexapro, and
nothing else. It was creepy, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

While
Lilly is known for launching the SSRI antidepressant revolution with Prozac,
Cymbalta does much of the heavy lifting now with worldwide sales of $3.075
billion in 2009.

Many remember Cymbalta as the drug 19-year-old healthy
clinical volunteer Traci Johnson killed herself on, during trials on the Lilly

campus in 2004–soon after FDA investigations into suicide/antidepressant
links.

Traci had no depression history said Rev. Joel Barnaby, a
spokesman for the Johnson family, who called Lilly‘s decision to proceed with
Cymbalta’s launch as scheduled “offensive” posturing.

Five others
suicides occurred during Cymbalta clinical trials, said the FDA and twice the
rate of suicide attempts were seen in women prescribed the drug for stress
urinary incontinence–also patients with no depression to blame.

Others
remember Cymbalta as the drug Carol Anne Gotbaum, daughter-in-law of New York
City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, was taking during her macabre death in
police custody at the Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport in 2007.

But now Lilly
and WebMD are pushing Cymbalta for pain since it was approved for
fibromyalgia in 2008. “Across cultures, patients who complain of pain tend to be
depressed,” says the 2002 article which calls WebMD and Lilly partners, a
finding from a “huge international study by Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly and
Company.”

“Could your muscle aches be related to depression?” hawks WebMD

text under the heading, “Recognizing the Symptoms of Depression.” Next to it is
a picture of a depressed women with arrows pointing to the pain in her head and
neck, chest and stomach, arms and hands, legs and feet and of course
back.

“Print out this symptom diary, and fill it out. Then take it to
your doctor to discuss what may be causing your symptoms.”

This content,
we’re told, is “selected and controlled by WebMD‘s editorial staff” but “funded
by Lilly USA.”

Martha Rosenberg is
columnist and cartoonist based in Chicago I

Paragraph four reads: “Aviles, who helps out in the rental/ management office of Bristol Lodging Sober House ­ a 15-unit rooming house at 68 Broadway where Foster had been living alone ­ was able to identify two of the meds as Cymbalta and Trazodone.”

“Both drugs are anti-depressants.”

http://www.tauntongazette.com/homepage/x1914256178/Murder-suspect-had-Rx-meds

Murder suspect had Rx meds
By Charles Winokoor, Staff Writer
GateHouse News Service
Posted Oct 31, 2009 @ 12:06 AM
Taunton ­

Steven Foster, the man accused of the brutal slaying of gas station attendant Hegazy Sayed, had prescriptions for at least two anti-depressant drugs leading up to Sunday night’s shooting.

Marlene Aviles said that when she cleaned out the single-room, efficiency apartment that Foster had rented the three weeks prior to the execution-style killing, she retrieved “six or seven” containers left on top of the refrigerator ­ all of them bearing Foster’s name and all nearly full of prescription pills.

Aviles, who helps out in the rental/ management office of Bristol Lodging Sober House ­ a 15-unit rooming house at 68 Broadway where Foster had been living alone ­ was able to identify two of the meds as Cymbalta and Trazodone.

Both drugs are anti-depressants.

Trazodone, in particular, is also used for sleeplessness and chronic pain.

Aviles also said that Foster had mentioned to her that he suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that affects the feet and legs and sometimes the arms and upper body.

A woman answering the front door Thursday at the Dighton house where Foster’s ex-girlfriend and young son reportedly both live refused to identify herself ­ but she did confirm that Foster had been prescribed anti-depressants and that he suffers from Guillain-Barré syndrome.

According to Taunton District Court records, an abuse protection order request on behalf of Christine Lima of Dighton was formally filed against Foster on Oct. 26, the day after the shooting ­ and also the day that he was charged with murder, armed robbery, intimidating a witness and possession of an illegal firearm, the latter of which police say was a stolen .22-caliber rifle.

The 10 p.m. shooting of Sayed, a 45-year-old Egyptian immigrant who is survived by a wife in Taunton and four children in Egypt, was especially abhorrent to many people for its sudden brutality.

Authorities allege that Foster, instead of walking into the gas station office and demanding money, pre-emptively opened fire through a glass door hitting Sayed once in the head.

He next walked in, pumped a second bullet into Sayed’s head while he lay on the floor and made off with $15, according to the Bristol County DA’s office.

Less than five minutes later Foster allegedly was captured on surveillance footage walking barefoot into a nearby CVS store and then exiting with a pair of slippers.

Authorities say he lost his shoes after the shooting when he ran into some woods to change his clothes.

Foster’s Guillain-Barré syndrome, which besides producing weakness and tingling in the feet and legs can in some cases leads to paralysis, could have contributed to a state of depression, said Dr. Harvey Reback, a Fall River-based internal medicine physician.

Reback, who likened the advanced effects of the disorder to those of polio, said that someone with an existing psychotic diagnosis, who feels better after taking an anti-depressant and then stops, can be courting disaster.

Upon hearing some of the details of the Sayed shooting case, Reback immediately drew an analogy to the brutal stabbing attack earlier this week on a female psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“It’s my gut feeling that he may not have been taking his medicine,” he said of the MGH assault.

In the Boston incident the attacker was shot to death by an off-duty guard, but not before grievously injuring his vicitm.

“If someone is crazy to begin with and they’re not taking their medicine, they can go off the deep end,” Reback said.

Bristol County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Gregg Miliote, when asked to comment on the possibility that Foster was off his meds the night of the shooting, said that he had no information pertaining to the defendant’s use of prescription pills.

“I’m not aware of any mental health issues,” Miliote said.

Foster, who is being held without bail, is scheduled to appear for a probable cause hearing on Nov. 20.

Miliote said that although the DA’s office has a strong case, it could take as long as two years before the trial gets underway, not unusual when it comes to trials that can lead to very lengthy sentences.

“Look at the Elizabeth Smart case, they just started the trial,” he said, referring to the 14-year Utah girl who in 2002 was kidnapped by a husband and wife, and then allegedly raped repeatedly by her male captor until being rescued nine months later.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/lifestyles/local_other/article/S-PHAR06_20090902-190006/290023/

Q:I have been taking Effexor XR for two
years. At first I was pleased that it relieved the anxiety, depression and
excessive worrying I had been suffering. Then I began experiencing insomnia and

night sweats and decided to taper off this antidepressant.

After cutting
my dose in half, I have had brain zaps (impossible to explain) and pressure in
my ears.

Answer: Many people find that antidepressants such as Effexor
(venlafaxine), Cymbalta (duloxetine), Lexapro (escitalopram), Paxil (paroxetine)
and Zoloft (sertraline) are helpful for depression. But there can be a dark
side.

Stopping this type of drug can lead to withdrawal symptoms such as
dizziness, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, sweating, visual disturbances and
difficulty concentrating. Many people complain of shocklike sensations in their
head (brain “zaps” or “shivers”).

Paragraphs 11 through 14 read: “The defense’s first witness, Delaney, said Koldewey’s destructive state of mind was chemically induced.”

He testified that just days before making the threats, Koldeway was prescribed a sleep medication that interfered with other medications he had been taking.

The drug, desipramine [an older tricyclic antidepressant], can cause sudden hostility, panic attacks and aggressiveness when taken in combination with cymbalta, which Koldeway was also using, said Delaney.

“When you use these drugs together, you’ve just got to be careful,” said Delaney. “Patients should be monitored for reactions on a day-to- day basis.”

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2009-09-01/story/death_threats_on_brunswick_judge_blamed_on_faulty_drug_mix

Death threats on Brunswick judge blamed on faulty drug mix

The man accused of threatening a judge had a medication interaction, pharmacologist said.

By Carole Hawkins
Story updated at 8:24 AM on Wednesday, Sep. 2, 2009
BRUNSWICK, Ga. A Brunswick man accused of making death threats against a judge was suffering from a toxic prescription drug interaction, a pharmacologist testified Tuesday.

Tallahassee pharmacologist Marland Delaney Jr. said Matthew Koldewey was being treated with a “laundry list” of drugs when he threatened to kill Chief Judge Amanda Williams and halfway house director Chad Waters.

In January 2008, Koldewey threatened to take Williams out with a rifle and also twist her neck with his hands, according to language in the indictment filed against him. Williams had ordered Koldewey into a substance abuse program in lieu of jail.

Koldewey made the threats during a counseling session with Dale Tushman, a counselor at Gateway Behavioral Health Services who was treating him.

He also said he wanted to slit Waters’ throat and burn down Alpha House, where Koldewey was living while in treatment.

Assistant District Attorney David Peterson said the specific nature of the threats suggested Koldewey was serious.

Waters, who runs Alpha House, testified Tuesday that he took safety precautions in response to Koldewey’s threat. His boss placed a restraining order against Koldewey, and Waters spoke to his family and other men at Alpha House about the threat.

Waters also said the threat came unexpectedly.

“I was shocked,” he said when asked his reaction. “[Koldewey] had never said an unkind word to me before.”

Defense attorney Robert Crowe said Koldewey’s threats were angry thoughts said in confidence to a counselor to whom he had gone for treatment.

The defense’s first witness, Delaney, said Koldewey’s destructive state of mind was chemically induced.

He testified that just days before making the threats, Koldeway was prescribed a sleep medication that interfered with other medications he had been taking.

The drug, desipramine, can cause sudden hostility, panic attacks and aggressiveness when taken in combination with cymbalta, which Koldeway was also using, said Delaney.

“When you use these drugs together, you’ve just got to be careful,” said Delaney. “Patients should be monitored for reactions on a day-to- day basis.”

Delaney criticized the drug regimen Koldewey undertook from the time he had been jailed as “very high higher than most full-blown psychotics are given.”

He said the symptoms were a “warning bell” that drug levels in Koldewey’s body had reached toxic levels.

After the incident, Koldewey was sent to Georgia Regional Medical Hospital, where a doctor took him off desipramine.

“Three days later, he was better,” Delaney said. “They turned off the faucet.”

Koldewey is charged with two types of terroristic threats. One for threats against Chad Waters and Williams as individuals, which carries a sentence of one to five years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines. The second, for making threats in retaliation against a judge, which carries a sentence of five to 10 years and up to $50,000 in fines.

The trial is expected to begin Thursday.