The following is a clip from a news story that appeared on Bloomberg.com yesterday – Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — AstraZeneca Plc “buried” unfavorable studies on its antipsychotic drug Seroquel, according to an internal e-mail unsealed as part of litigation over the medicine.
The drugmaker failed to publicize results of at least three clinical trials of Seroquel and engaged in “cherry picking” of data from one of those studies for use in a presentation, an AstraZeneca official said in a December 1999 e-mail unsealed yesterday under an agreement between the company and lawyers for patients. The London-based company faces about 9,000 lawsuits claiming it failed to properly warn users that Seroquel can cause diabetes and other health problems.
“The larger issue is how we face the outside world when they begin to criticize us for suppressing data,” John Tumas, an AstraZeneca publications manager, told colleagues in the e-mail.
More than 15,000 patients have sued AstraZeneca, claiming the company withheld information of a connection between diabetes and Seroquel use from doctors and patients. Many of the lawsuits also claim AstraZeneca promoted Seroquel, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for unapproved uses.”
At the Drug-Free Alliance, we hear stories from families all the time who have been negatively affected by drugs like this and others in the same category. Unfortunately, many of them were even given these drugs at an inpatient drug rehab center that told them it would help them in some way. It is horrible to think about the millions of people who have problems in life that are misled to thinking one of these drugs can handle the situation when they often make their lives worse in the long run.
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