Big Pharma’s cat-and-mouse game can kill
Email communciation from Dr Glenn S. Rothfeld. M.D.
It’s a secret operation, one that would put the CIA and the KGB to shame!
Every time you take a prescription pill, you’re putting your life into Big Pharma’s hands.
And you want to believe they’ve provided all the information that you and your doctor need to keep you safe from serious side effects, of even death.
But a new study has found that major drug companies have been engaging in a cat-and-mouse game for years. One that’s designed to keep you from ever knowing just how dangerous their meds can be.
Researchers from the New York University School of Medicine poured through the records of every single new drug the FDA approved in 2012.
And it turns out that more than a third of the clinical trials behind these meds were never released to the public — even though the drug companies are legally required to do so. Now most of my patients don’t exactly spend their time combing through the statistical gobbledygook of clinical trials.
But I do. These trials help me understand a drug’s benefits — and its risks — before I ever prescribe it to you.
And the fact that the drug companies are sitting on information that they don’t want me — or any other doctor for that matter — to see is alarming.
Especially when withholding this information has been proven to cost lives.
You may remember that the painkiller Vioxx was recalled about a decade ago after patients started dropping dead from heart attacks. But what you may not have heard is that there was a clinical trial that showed the drug doubled your heart attack risk — but Merck never released it.
Sometimes Big Pharma will hide a clinical trial because the study proved that a drug doesn’t work — and publishing the information could cost a company billions.
That seems to have been the case with Roche’s anti-flu med Tamiflu. Roche finally released unpublished clinical data on Tamiflu after countries like the United States spent a fortune stockpiling it.
And guess what? The classified information that they kept so hush-hush was that the drug isn’t particularly effective. It shortens the flu by a handful of hours, at most.
Keeping you in the dark may make Big Pharma a fortune, but it’s not good for anybody’s health.
. . .
To Your Health,
Dr. Glenn S. Rothfeld, M.D.