Sunday, November 16, 2014

Bad Medicine, Can You Trust Big PHarma, Clinical Trial Data Or Even FDA?

I was searching for information on cold / flu season that is ahead of us. I did find some information but I got stuck at "Bad Medicine". It is hard even to think about this after reading an article on Newsweek. The following is an excerpt from the article and have left me totally confused. Follow the link after the jump for the complete article.
Millions have taken Tamiflu and still living but if Tamiflu does nothing, and there’s even a slight chance of life-threatening side effects, why was it approved? And why continue to prescribe it? That’s what the Cochrane Collaboration argued in a report it published in April.
Do you still want Tamiflu this cold / flu season. Looks like only Tamiflu, I would take is the fake Tamiflu that appeared in 2005, an export from China, at lease it had Vitamin C.

On the morning of March 2, 2005, a 14-year-old Japanese girl woke up scared. At first she thought someone was outside the house watching her, but then she decided the stranger must be inside. She wandered restlessly and, despite the cold weather, threw open all the windows. Later, over a meal, she declared, “The salad is poisoned.” Two days later, she said she wanted to kill herself.
This teenager with no history of mental illness was diagnosed with delirium. The night before the hallucinations started, she began taking an anti-influenza drug called Tamiflu (generic name: oseltamivir), which governments around the world have spent billions stockpiling for the next major flu outbreak.
But evidence released earlier this year by  Cochrane Collaboration, a London-based nonprofit, shows that a significant amount of negative data from the drug’s clinical trials were hidden from the public. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) knew about it, but the medical community did not; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which doesn’t have the same access to unpublished data as regulators, had recommended the drug without being able to see the full picture. When results from those unpublished trials finally did emerge, they cast doubt over whether Tamiflu is as effective as the manufacturer says.
..........
That Japanese girl, whose case was detailed in an FDA report, did not kill herself. But at least 70 people have died, many of them by suicide, after Tamiflu-induced episodes. The deaths were almost surreal: A 14-year-old who took Tamiflu jumped off a balcony, and a 17-year-old on the drug ran in front of a truck. Scientists documented other cases of “psychopathic events,” including a South Korean girl who temporarily developed bipolar disorder and an 8-year-old Japanese boy who wouldn’t answer to his name and began to growl.

Big Pharma Plays Hide-the-Ball With Data NewsWeek
fake Tamiflu that appeared in 2005

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