How Fake Patients are used to Approve Drugs

Selling Marked Up Drugs With Made Up Patients–Part 1

Excerpts:

It’s happened to anyone who’s attended an open-mike session at an FDA advisory committee hearing. A queue of “patients” materializes out of nowhere to testify, often in tears, about the crucial need for approval of a drug the public has often not even heard of. Sometimes the drug has not been approved by the FDA at all, but often it’s just not been approved for the use the patients wants–so it’s not reimbursable.

“When insurers balk at reimbursing patients for new prescription medications, these groups typically swing into action, rallying sufferers to appear before public and consumer panels, contact lawmakers, and provide media outlets a human face to attach to a cause,” writes Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times of the artificial grassroots groups, sometimes called Astroturf.

Who are these “patient groups” with Pharma agendas? They include the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, which gets half its funding from Pharma and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which received $23 million in just two years from Pharma. Both were investigated by Congress along with the Mental Health America, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Screening for Mental Health Inc, Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, the National Center for Mental Checkups at Columbia University (Teen Screen) and the Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation.

In recent years, a front group called Active Minds has also surfaced on college campuses to tap the lucrative college “mental illness” market. A lot of money is lost, say Pharma internal documents, when kids go to college and go off the meds their parents and teachers insist they take.

Read the Full Article Here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Selling-Marked-Up-Drugs-Wi-by-Martha-Rosenberg-130130-244.html

Read Part 2 here.