AstraZeneca - Seroquel - The Lies, The Deceit, and Just More Damned Lies

AstraZeneca - Seroquel - The Lies, The Deceit, and Just More Damned Lies

AstraZeneca - Seroquel - The lies that never cease! The damage that never ends!

AstraZeneca - Seroquel - Lies, Deceit, and more Damned Lies

Recently headlines from various news outlets around the world have reported AstraZeneca has settled 2/3 of their current Seroquel lawsuits (17,500) for an estimated 198 million dollars.

This reporting was based solely on AstraZeneca's own accounting and statements, and has not been verified by the litigant law firms, or has anyone injured by Seroquel been directly approached regarding this reported settlement to my knowledge at this time.

In fact, there is serious doubt that the majority of litigants would accept an estimated $ 11,300 settlement per claim for life long injury such as diabetes for which the drug Seroquel is the leading causation factor. This in-turn will lead to many years of court room battles extending far beyond AstraZeneca's Seroquel patent expiration scheduled for 2012 and in the end may have real devastating effects on their projected reported profits and corporate stock value.

This is how lies related to drug safety cover ups, marketing crimes, medicare fraud, and misleading company press releases get misconstrued by our media and twisted around by these corporate giant PR slight of hand tricks, when in all actuality/truth AstraZeneca has generated little more the unsupported speculation, with some sleazy PR spin in an attempt to take focus off their very profitable crimes.

I can only speculate that much of this spoon fed blabber is tossed out into the public sector directed at the their stock holders, so they don't get nervous about their pharmaceutical golden egg investments and start to question AstraZeneca's Management Team abilities and ethical responsibilities regarding reporting projected earnings and legal liabilities.

Of course when you honestly analyze AstraZeneca's track record, and weigh it against a long history of unsavory behaviors, you might conclude this is just another one of those "Great Smoke & Mirrors Jobs" being propagandized by the AZ PR marketing team.

I will once again in this posting insert some short commentary and web links into this article in an attempt to refresh everyone's memory to AstraZeneca's sordid and unethical behaviors related to their seemingly ongoing PR con job.

Then you can judge for yourself in the broader court of public opinion who should be trusted and believed related to a well financed PR Front that make homogenized and generalized statements such as this "The company has worked diligently with the US Food and Drug Administration to ensure that the safety profile of Seroquel is reflected appropriately in the prescribing information.”

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9d45a982-ae0c-11df-bb55-00144feabdc0.html

Via pharmagossip

AstraZeneca - Seroquel: Lies, damned lies ... and the results of clinical trials

There are lies, damned lies and ... the results of clinical trials. That might be the conclusion from internal AstraZeneca documents made public during litigation on its antipsychotic drug Seroquel, which is now coming to a close. Someone is not telling the truth?

example: Making a Killing--Marketing Exercises that Put Lives At Risk by Dr. Carl Elliott

They highlight apparent efforts by the group to communicate favorable data selectively to boost prescriptions. Their full context may never be fully scrutinized because of out-of-court settlements being finalized with US patients and prosecutors.

AstraZeneca said: “Selected documents produced in connection with the Seroquel product liability litigation do not provide a fair and accurate picture. The company has worked diligently with the US Food and Drug Administration to ensure that the safety profile of Seroquel is reflected appropriately in the prescribing information.”

and the spokesperson is? AstraZeneca's Tony Jewell - the voice of evil and spin

The Spin, The Spies, The Lies, - V-fluence - Astra Zeneca

AstraZeneca - Dave Brennan confesses to what?

While denying the allegations, it has reached a $520m (£335m) settlement with the Department of Justice and two whistle-blowers, related to past marketing practices. It will soon pay $198m to thousands of patients who developed diabetes, and has won one case after arguing that it had not been proved that the drug caused the condition. Example links:

Department of Justice appears to be aiding the World's Largest Drug Cartel - The Pharmaceutical Industry - Astra Zeneca

AstraZeneca and the Big Pharma Cartel Thumb their noses at DOJ - We don't need to follow no stinking CIA

AstraZeneca - Seroquel - What CIA? What Lawsuit? What Diabetes?

In 1997 AstraZeneca launched Seroquel, known generically as quetiapine, to treat schizophrenia and marketed it as causing fewer side effects than existing medicines, notably extra-pyramidal symptoms (EPS) such as muscle spasms.

Just more "Smoke and Mirrors" as the criminal pharmaceutical industry goes on doing "business as usual"

Big Pharma Caught with hand in the cookie jar bribing foreign country's in pay to play sham.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” – Big Pharma and the evil minions that market their Magic Poison Pills to Children

Through additional clinical trials to persuade regulators of wider-ranging efficacy and few side effects, and aggressive marketing to make a similar case to doctors, the drug became a $1bn-a-year “blockbuster” by 2002. It has generated more than 25bn in sales over the past decade and $4.5bn last year alone

AstraZeneca - Seroquel - The 5 billion dollar a year pathological lie

Speak and Be Drugged - Selling Depression to Sell Drugs - Edelman PR, DBSA, AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca - caught once more with it's pants down- anyone going to donate a belt?

AstraZeneca's Seroquel for Cannabis Dependence?? - like using a shotgun for flea control

In February 1997, Richard Lawrence, Seroquel’s marketing manager, raised the results of “this cursed” Study 15, a clinical trial that was never published but showed no advantage of Seroquel over Haldol, a rival treatment. It was one of several studies that the company cited selectively in marketing materials.

“I am not 100 per cent comfortable with this data being made publicly available at the present time,” he wrote. “However, I understand that we have little choice ... Lisa has done a great ‘smoke-and-mirrors’ job!”

In 2000, an internal “meta analysis” comparing different studies on the efficacy of Seroquel and other anti-psychotics showed no significant benefit over the alternatives. Geoffrey Birkett, an AstraZeneca executive, characterized the findings for Seroquel as “unsurpassed” – a word he defined to lawyers suing the company as “possibly better ... possibly equivalent”.

One of AstraZeneca’s pivotal marketing claims to doctors was that Seroquel resulted in less weight gain than other anti-psychotics. Yet as the drug became more widely used,doctors and patients reported just such effects, resulting in diabetes.

As early as August 1997, Lisa Arvanitis, a researcher at the company, warned colleagues about going “ballyhoo” on Seroquel’s lower weight gain. “We know we have weight gain but is it limited to the short-term treatment?” she wrote in an e-mail. “I’m not sure there is yet any type of competitive opportunity, no matter how weak.”

In February 1999, Nick Hough, another executive, warned on one study suggesting patients on Seroquel lost weight:“We must not get too carried away with ‘weight loss’ when we know the rest of our data appears to point in the other direction.”

In December, employees debated whether they should sanction publication of a study called COSTAR, which showed statistical equivalence at best when comparing Seroquel with the rival drug Risperdal.

“I think that we are still not comfortable about communicating the overall results of this study,” wrote Martin Jones. “Are we sure that ... we can present the EPS data in isolation given the nature of the other results?”

John Tumas replied:“There has been a precedent set regarding ‘cherry picking’ of data ... Thus far, we have buried Trials 15, 31, 56 and are now considering COSTAR ... We must find a way to diminish the negative findings. But in my opinion we cannot hide them.”

Jim Galvin warned: “Selectively using (for example) the EPS data from COSTAR is pushing it too far ... and would destroy our current high standing in the publishing industry.”

UPDATE - AstraZeneca - Seroquel the anti-psychotic turned anti-depressant, how lies and misleading marketing work

Pharma targets Veterans with antipsychotic cocktails for PTSD

AstraZeneca starting a new block buster ad campaign for that tarnished and dangerous drug Seroquel

Other AstraZeneca documents show that the company was cautious about research conducted by Michael Reinstein, a psychiatrist in Chicago, who was a strong advocate of Seroquel. But – recognizing him as “possibly our most important single customer”– it paid him almost $500,000 over a decade in fees and costs to present his research at conferences, and circulated his findings to doctors

AZ Paid Chicago Doctors of Death to promote Seroquel

.As one AstraZeneca employee put it while dispatching a copy to a colleague in Sweden in 2005: “Goes to show you that if there’s a huge need for data to support a message, the data will find its way out (despite our guidance to the contrary).”

The same could be said for the internal e-mails – something likely to make users far more cautious in future as to what they commit to computer.