Confidential report reveals: Big Pharma trying to stop long-term safety studies of AD

[runawaybunny]

Confidential report reveals: Big Pharma trying to stop long-term safety studies of ADHD drugs (Ritalin, Concerta) - Trans World News

A confidential document, now made public by a Swedish court, tells how pharmaceutical companies (calling themselves the “Consortium”) are trying to stop long-term safety studies of ADHD drugs (Ritalin, Concerta)

The companies producing methylphenidate products (like Ritalin and Concerta) are normally competitors, marketing ADHD as a disease and the narcotic drugs as its solution. But when they are threatened with marketing restrictions they have a common interest.

If more scientific long-term studies would be done showing the harmful effects of the drugs it could lead to withdrawal from the market of this class of drugs. Therefore Big Pharma has to stop all such studies not written and controlled by themselves. The only studies they support are those conducted by paid researchers like psychiatry professors Joseph Biederman, Timothy Wilens and Thomas Spencer, where the outcome is known already from the beginning.

 

[flutterby]

Shocking.

 

[gcvmom]

Thanks for posting this. However, I take exception to reporters who interject their own opinion in an article that is supposed to be factual and reporting the news:

Many references are made to Dr. Joseph Biederman – the father of the disastrous invention pediatric bipolar disorder, and subject to Congressional investigations in the US – and his colleagues, Wilens, Spencer and Faraone. So for example we get to know that it has been found that 26% (!!) of the children with ADHD also can have bipolar disorder.

The term "disastrous invention" is a very subjective remark. And the insertion of two exclamation points by the author are also editorial in nature, NOT a report of the facts. Furthermore, the "reporter" frames a statistic of probability (26% of the children with ADHD) as if it were fact. The operative word in the statement is "CAN," not "DO." Readers need to be sure that they review multiple sources of information before accepting someone else's viewpoint as fact. Whether it's a published study in a medical journal, or a misinformed writer trying to inflame reader opinion.

Just my 2 cents.