• Home
  • About CCHR
    • Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights
  • Contact Us
  • Donate

CCHR Oregon

Citizens Commission on Human Rights

Investigating and exposing psychiatric violations of human rights since 1969
  • Drugs
  • Electroshock
  • ADHD
  • Alternatives
  • Report Psychiatric Abuse

Shocking Details For Moms and Babies Trickling Out on Questionable Effexor Drug Marketing

August 2, 2018

Something shocking has been going on with the SNRI antidepressant drug Effexor since the drug was listed in the 2015 list of drugs to be banned, published by the European Medicines Agency ¹. Equally shocking, there are hundreds more drugs banned in Europe, but not in the US or Canada.

Various drugs, about 700 in number including Effexor, were originally approved based on what we now know was false information and discredited testing results. A company called GVK Biosciences reported false and misleading information to the FDA and elsewhere. Based on this information, Effexor (and 700 other drugs) were approved for marketing to the public. This fiasco was uncovered by French inspectors in 2014. As a result, health regulators banned Effexor in Malta, Poland, The Netherlands, Portugal and Germany. But the FDA’s and Health Canada’s silence hangs as eerily as a cloud of fog over a toxic swamp.

Black Box Warning Inadequate

The black box warning on Effexor (venlafaxine) informs only of increased risk of suicidality. No other warnings are listed. However, The New England Journal of Medicine published a 2004 article ² citing important information from clinical research concerning babies affected by pregnant or nursing mothers taking antidepressants.

Some of their findings included:

  • Antidepressants doubled the number of miscarriages and still births compared to the control group (not on medication).
  • Antidepressants quintupled premature births.
  • Antidepressants tripled birth defects relating to congenital heart malformations.
  • Infants exposed to antidepressants have a six-times greater risk of a fatal lung problem called persistent pulmonary hypertension.
  • One third of women who take antidepressants have had a baby who died, was premature, or suffers seizures.

Effexor Lack of Success

Quite apart from the harm to infants and suicidality and violent psychosis in children, teens, and adults, a combined majority of those taking Effexor either report no positive effect, or adverse effects, leading to wanting to stop the drug. Effexor withdrawal is difficult to accomplish due to the extreme reactions encountered when stopping the drug.

Women who become pregnant may also decide to come off an SNRI drug to avoid the risks mentioned above. Young people who were prescribed the drug (despite the warnings on the black box not to) may experience suicidal thoughts and are also likely to want to come off the drug. Not exactly a success story.

The FDA warns never to stop Effexor abruptly; always seek medical oversight and guidance to stay safe.

Effexor and Brain Damage

SNRI drugs are thought to influence and degrade the delicate neurochemistry of the CNS and brain in at least two major ways. Effexor creates an overabundance of norepinephrine, or the hormone called adrenaline. At the same time, the drug also causes a temporary buildup of serotonin which is a down-regulating or inhibitory neurotransmitter. In effect, SNRI drugs gun the gas pedal while stomping on the brakes. Pfizer might better have called this drug “Jekyll and Hyde”. Or perhaps “the two-headed monster of a pill”.

Drugs do not create more hormones or neurotransmitters, they only use them up. Eventually, these two hormones (serotonin and norepinephrine) atrophy, becoming useless, leaving the person in a deficit of both. Studies have begun to reveal that SNRI’s make changes to the workings of the brain that may become permanent. In any case, there is little to no success to report, and even more tragically, much destruction that has hurt an awful lot of people over the years.

Lack of Information Can Be Dangerous

One must remain vigilant and alert because of the conspicuous lack of information provided by our regulatory bodies. Where prescription drugs like Effexor are concerned, it’s “buyer beware”. One should do one’s own research carefully and thoroughly, and seek out non-harmful treatment options before agreeing to something that statistically is likely to inflict such abhorrent risks.

Many people have had success with holistic, drug-free treatments to alleviate emotional distress and suffering. Thankfully, there are more and more physicians and caregivers who have become aware of the dangers of unnecessary and even permanent damage caused by prescription drugs like Effexor. Keep informed. Keep safe.

(1) Products for which the marketing authorisations are recommended for suspension by the CHMP on 21 May 2015, European Medicines Agency, EMA/344050/2015, (Effexor listed under generic name “Venlafaxine”),  http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Other/2015/05/WC500187078.pdf
(2) First-Trimester Use of Selective Serotonin-Reuptake Inhibitors and the Risk of Birth Defects, New England Journal of Medicine 2007; 356:2675-2683, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa067407

Filed Under: Drugs

Robin Williams – Another Comedy of Errors

December 23, 2014

rwilliams (2)When he committed suicide on August 11, 2014 comedy icon Robin Williams joined a long list of artists who suffered tragically at the hands of psychiatrists.

On the surface, Williams’ death seemed straightforward. According to USA Today’s website, the Marin County coroner’s report ruled his death as a “suicide by hanging, with no evidence of alcohol or illegal drugs in his system and only therapeutic concentrations of prescribed medications.”

True, all the drugs in his body were legal. But those “therapeutic” medications included mirtazapine, an antidepressant used for “major depressive disorder.”

Antidepressants can cause violence and suicide

Antidepressants can cause worsening depression, anxiety, panic attacks, hostility, aggression, psychosis, violence & suicidality. Numerous studies show them to be no more effective than placebo.

Also known as Remeron, it carries 10 international drug regulatory warnings on causing suicidal ideation.

In total, there are 32 possible side effects, says Drugs.com, including mood or mental changes, abnormal thinking, feelings of not caring, mood or mental changes, anger, mood swings and unusual excitement.

There’s more. The antipsychotic Seroquel was also found at the scene. While there were no traces of it in his body, eight pills were missing from the bottle.

This drug, says Drugs.com has 10 possible adverse reactions: psychosis, hallucinations, paranoid reactions, delusions, manic reaction, depersonalization, catatonic reaction, emotional lability, suicide attempt, and euphoria.

Despite all this, several news websites cast a suspicious eye toward Lewy body dementia as it has symptoms similar to Parkinson’s. As the “second most common type of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s disease, it causes a progressive decline in mental abilities”, says the Mayo Clinic.

Which may be why “unnamed family sources” in the Williams’ family claimed that Lewy body dementia was a critical “triggering” factor in his suicide.

However, the Mayo Clinic website does not list suicidal thoughts or behavior among the possible symptoms of this condition.

That agrees with Gayatri Devi, an attending neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York who has treated such patients. He noted that “suicide does not usually occur in Lewy body dementia patients.”

And so, the loose strings remain ignored by the media and the medical community.

Meanwhile, we lose a talent who was equally talented in all genres. His peers and the public agreed: with 106 acting credits, he garnered two Emmys, five Grammys, six Golden Globes and two Screen Actor Guild Awards.

Psychiatric drug side effects

No one should attempt to get off of psychiatric drugs without a doctor’s supervision.

Filed Under: Drugs

Drugging our Children: Side Effects

April 26, 2014


20 million children are taking psychiatric drugs, and parents, legislators and the general public are not being given the documented risks from international drug regulatory agencies and medical journals. CCHR has created a one of a kind psychiatric drug database containing all international warnings and studies on psychiatric drugs in an easy to search online database. People can search for drugs like Ritalin, Adderall, Prozac, Zoloft, Seroquel (any brand name drug) or by drug class such as antidepressant, antipsychotic or stimulant. They can also search all adverse reactions to psychiatric drugs that have been reported to the U.S. FDA between 2004- 208.

Click here to view psychiatric drug database.

Filed Under: Children, Drugs

Ten myths about psychotropic drugs

January 23, 2014

Atypical antipsychoticsBy Peter Gøtzsche, MD;  Co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration.

At the Nordic Cochrane Centre, we have researched antidepressants for several years and I have long wondered why leading professors of psychiatry base their practice on a number of erroneous myths. These myths are harmful to patients. Many psychiatrists are well aware that the myths do not hold and have told me so, but they don’t dare deviate from the official positions because of career concerns.

Being a specialist in internal medicince, I don’t risk ruining my career by incurring the professors’ wrath and I shall try here to come to the rescue of the many conscientious but oppressed psychiatrists and patients by listing the worst myths and explain why they are harmful.

Myth 1: Your disease is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain

Most patients are told this but it is completely wrong. We have no idea about which interplay of psychosocial conditions, biochemical processes, receptors and neural pathways that lead to mental disorders and the theories that patients with depression lack serotonin and that patients with schizophrenia have too much dopamine have long been refuted. The truth is just the opposite. There is no chemical imbalance to begin with, but when treating mental illness with drugs, we create a chemical imbalance, an artificial condition that the brain tries to counteract.

This means that you get worse when you try to stop the medication. An alcoholic also gets worse when there is no more alcohol but this doesn’t mean that he lacked alcohol in the brain when he started drinking.

The vast majority of doctors harm their patients further by telling them that the withdrawal symptoms mean that they are still sick and still need the mediciation. In this way, the doctors turn people into chronic patients, including those who would have been fine even without any treatment at all. This is one of the main reasons that the number of patients with mental disorders is increasing, and that the number of patients who never come back into the labour market also increases. This is largely due to the drugs and not the disease.

Myth 2: It’s no problem to stop treatment with antidepressants

A Danish professor of psychiatry said this at a recent meeting for psychiatrists, just after I had explained that it was difficult for patients to quit. Fortunately, he was contradicted by two foreign professors also at the meeting. One of them had done a trial with patients suffering from panic disorder and agoraphobia and half of them found it difficult to stop even though they were slowly tapering off. It cannot be because the depression came back, as the patients were not depressed to begin with. The withdrawal symptoms are primarily due to the antidepressants and not the disease.

Myth 3: Psychotropic Drugs for Mental Illness are like Insulin for Diabetes

Most patients with depression or schizophrenia have heard this falsehood over and over again, almost like a mantra, in TV, radio and newspapers. When you give insulin to a patient with diabetes, you give something the patient lacks, namely insulin. Since we’ve never been able to demonstrate that a patient with a mental disorder lacks something that people who are not sick don’t lack, it is wrong to use this analogy.

Patients with depression don’t lack serotonin, and there are actually drugs that work for depression although they lower serotonin. Moreover, in contrast to insulin, which just replaces what the patient is short of, and does nothing else, psychotropic drugs have a very wide range of effects throughout the body, many of which are harmful. So, also for this reason, the insulin analogy is extremely misleading.

Myth 4: Psychotropic drugs reduce the number of chronically ill patients

This is probably the worst myth of them all. US science journalist Robert Whitaker demonstrates convincingly in Anatomy of an Epidemic that the increasing use of drugs not only keeps patients stuck in the sick role, but also turns many problems that would have been transient into chronic diseases.

If there had been any truth in the insulin myth, we would have expected to see fewer patients who could not fend for themselves. However, the reverse has happened. The clearest evidence of this is also the most tragic, namely the fate of our children after we started treating them with drugs. In the United States, psychiatrist collect more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty and those who take most money tend to prescribe antipsychotics to children most ofter. This raises a suspicion of corruption of the academic judgement.

The consequences are damning. In 1987, just before the newer antidepressants (SSRIs or happy pills) came on the market, very few children in the United States were mentally disabled. Twenty years laterm it was over 500,000, which represents a 35-fold increase. The number of disabled mentally ill has exploded in all Western countries. One of the worst consequences if that the treatment with ADHD medications and happy pills has created an entirely new disease in about 10% of those treated – namely bipolar disorder – which we previously called manic depressive illness.

Leading psychiatrist have claimed that it is “very rare” that patients on antidepressants become bipolar. That’s not true. The number of children with bipolar increased 35-fold in the United States, which is a serious development, as we use antipsychotic drugs for this disorder. Antipsychotic drugs are very dangerous and one of the main reasons why patients with schizophrenia live 20 years shorter than others. I have estimated in my book, Deadly Medicine and Organized Crime, that just one of the many preparations, Zyprexa (olanzapine), has killed 200,000 patients worldwide.

Myth 5: Happy pills do not cause suicide in children and adolescents

Some professors are willing to admit that happy pills increase the incidence of suicidal behavior while denying that this necessarily leads to more suicides, although it is well documented that the two are closely related. Lundbeck’s CEO, Ulf Wiinberg, went even further in a radio programme in 2011 where he claimed that happy pills reduce the rate of suicide in children and adolescents. When the stunned reporter asked him why there then was a warning against this in the package inserts, he replied that he expected the leaflets would be changed by the authorities!

Suicides in healthy people, triggered by happy pills, have also been reported. The companies and the psychiatrists have consistently blamed the disease when patients commit suicide. It is true that depression increases the risk of suicide, but happy pills increase it even more, at least up to about age 40, according to a meta-analysis of 100,000 patients in randomized trials performed by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Myth 6: Happy pills have no side effects

At an international meeting on psychiatry in 2008, I criticized psychiatrists for wanting to screen many healthy people for depression. The recommended screening tests are so poor that one in three healthy people will be wrongly diagnosed as depressed. A professor replied that it didn’t matter that healthy people were treated as happy pills have no side effects!

Happy pills have many side effects. They remove both the top and the bottom of the emotions, which, according to some patients, feels like living under a cheese-dish cover. Patients care less about the consequences of their actions, lose empathy towards others, and can become very aggressive. In school shootings in the United States and elsewhere a striking number of people have been on antidepressants.

The companies tell us that only 5% get sexual problems with happy pills, but that’s not true. In a study designed to look at this problem, sexual disturbances developed in 59% of 1,022 patients who all had a normal sex life before they started an antidepressant. The symptoms include decreased libido, delayed or no orgasm or ejaculation, and erectile dysfunction, all at a high rate, and with a low tolerance among 40% of the patients. Happy pills should therefore not have been marketed for depression where the effect is rather small, but as pills that destroy your sex life.

Myth 7: Happy pills are not addictive

They surely are and it is no wonder because they are chemically related to and act like amphetamine. Happy pills are a kind of narcotic on prescription. The worst argument I have heard about the pills not causing dependency is that patients do not require higher doses. Shall we then also believe that cigarettes are not addictive? The vast majority of smokers consume the same number of cigarettes for years.

Myth 8: The prevalence of depression has increased a lot

A professor argued in a TV debate that the large consumption of happy pills wasn’t a problem because the incidence of depression had increased greatly in the last 50 years. I replied it was impossible to say much about this because the criteria for making the diagnosis had been lowered markedly during this period. If you wish to count elephants in Africa, you don’t lower the criteria for what constitutes an elephant and count all the wildebeest, too.

Myth 9: The main problem is not overtreatment, but undertreatment

Again, leading psychiatrists are completely out of touch with reality. In a 2007 survey, 51% of the 108 psychiatrists said that they used too much medicine and only 4 % said they used too little. In 2001–2003, 20% of the US population aged 18–54 years received treatment for emotional problems, and sales of happy pills are so high in Denmark that every one of us could be in treatment for 6 years of our lives. That is sick.

Myth 10: Antipsychotics prevent brain damage

Some professors say that schizophrenia causes brain damage and that it is therefore important to use antipsychotics. However, antipsychotics lead to shrinkage of the brain, and this effect is directly related to the dose and duration of the treatment. There is other good evidence to suggest that one should use antipsychotics as little as possible, as the patients then fare better in the long term. Indeed, one may completely avoid using antipsychotics in most patients with schizophrenia, which would significantly increase the chances that they will become healthy, and also increase life expectancy, as antipsychotics kill many patients.

How should we use psychotropic drugs?

I am not against using drugs, provided we know what we are doing and only use them in situations where they do more good than harm. Psychiatric drugs can be useful sometimes for some patients, especially in short-term treatment, in acute situations. But my studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion:

Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good. Psychiatrists should therefore do everything they can to treat as little as possible, in as short time as possible, or not at all, with psychotropic drugs.

Source: http://davidhealy.org/psychiatry-gone-astray/

Filed Under: Drugs

Psychiatry, the drug industry’s paradise

December 11, 2013

Psychiatry is a paradise for the drug industry, as definitions of psychiatric disorders are vague and easy to manipulate.

My studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion: Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good.

Antipsychotics are dangerous drugs that should only be used if there is a compelling reason, and preferably as short-term therapy at low dose because the drugs produce severe and permanent brain damage. […] even most patients with schizophrenia can avoid the drugs and it results in much better long-term outcomes than if they are treated and substantial financial savings as well.

– Peter Gøtzsche, MD;  Co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration

Recommended Reading

Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime by Peter C Gotzsche MD

Filed Under: Drugs, Featured

ADHD is not a disease

November 19, 2013

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

CCHR Co-founder, Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus

Filed Under: ADHD, Drugs

ADHD Drugs Don’t Boost Kids’ Grades

November 6, 2013

Studies of Children With Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Find Little Change

The Wall Street Journal
By SHIRLEY S. WANG

It’s no longer shocking to hear of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—and others simply facing a big test—taking ADHD medicine to boost their performance in school. But new studies point to a problem: There’s little evidence that the drugs actually improve academic outcomes.

Stimulants used to treat ADHD like Ritalin and Adderall are sometimes called “cognitive enhancers” because they have been shown in a number of studies to improve attention, concentration and even certain types of memory in the short-term. Similar drugs were given to World War II soldiers to improve their ability to stay alert while scanning radars for enemy aircraft.

However, a growing body of research finds that in the long run, achievement scores, grade-point averages or the likelihood of repeating a grade generally aren’t any different in kids with ADHD who take medication compared with those who don’t. (Typically, studies take into account accommodations schools provide kids with ADHD, such as more time to take tests.)

A June study looked at medication usage and educational outcomes of nearly 4,000 students in Quebec over an average of 11 years and found that boys who took ADHD drugs actually performed worse in school than those with a similar number of symptoms who didn’t. Girls taking the medicine reported more emotional problems, according to a working paper published on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit economics research firm.

“The possibility that [medication] won’t help them [in school] needs to be acknowledged and needs to be closely monitored,” says economics professor Janet Currie, an author on the paper and director of the Center for Health & Wellbeing, a health policy institute at Princeton University. Kids may not get the right dose to see sustained benefits, or they may stop taking the medication because side effects or other drawbacks outweigh the benefits, she says.

A central question puzzles those researching ADHD: If its drugs demonstrably improve attention, focus and self-control, why wouldn’t grades improve as well?

Millions of children and college students take medication to treat ADHD and to help them perform better in school. But there isn’t great evidence to suggest that these drugs actually improve academic outcomes. Shirley Wang reports on the News Hub.

Scientists are trying to understand this paradox in hopes of being better able to treat ADHD, a condition characterized by difficulty with attention and emotional control. Many kids are diagnosed when they start having trouble in school and are put on medication, often to help improve their odds of succeeding academically and socially.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 2.7 million kids were taking medication for ADHD in the U.S. as of 2007, the most recent data available. Some experts estimate that 15% to 20% of all ADHD medicine in the U.S. is diverted or shared with people who don’t have a prescription. Whether the drugs help the academic performance of kids without the disorder is even less clear.

“I don’t think that at this point we have any clear evidence that stimulants can enhance cognition in non-ADHD individuals,” says James Swanson, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, who studies this issue with colleagues at Florida International University.

The lack of academic benefit has been surprising because the drugs seem to have the potential to improve memory, among other cognitive skills. For instance, Claire Advokat, a professor emerita in the psychology department at Louisiana State University, and her colleagues found in a small study that episodic memory—memory for experiences—improved when kids with ADHD took relevant medication.

Children with ADHD not taking stimulants did far worse than kids taking medication in tasks that involved remembering scenes from a story they both heard and saw illustrated. Kids taking medication did just as well as control children without ADHD, according to the study published in April in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

But the effects largely don’t seem to translate into the classroom, especially in the long run. In one major, U.S. government-funded study known as the MTA that looked at the long-term effects of ADHD treatment, 579 children with the condition were randomized to one of three different kinds of treatment or a control group for 14 months.

For the first year of the study, the 8- and 9-year-old children who received medication and a combination treatment saw greater improvements in ADHD symptoms than the other two groups. Kids taking medicine also exhibited some improvement in educational outcomes in that first year.

But any benefit of the drug on symptoms dissipated by Year Three. At the most recent set of assessments, the eight-year follow-up, there were no differences between any of the groups on symptoms or academic achievement measures, suggesting that there wasn’t any long-term residual benefit of the treatments during childhood.

One way of interpreting the findings is that the medicine proves effective on immediate classroom behaviors like sitting still and interrupting the teacher less, but it doesn’t help with other factors important to successful completion of homework or test-taking, like family encouragement.

Other studies have shown that kids who take ADHD medication and study early for an exam tend to do just as well, if not better, than kids without ADHD. But those who take medication and study at the last minute don’t do any better.

Together, these findings suggest that medication alone isn’t enough to improve academic performance. The medicine may help with focus, but it doesn’t help with deciding what to focus on, experts say. Rather, it needs to be coupled with skills training, such as learning how to organize or prioritize.

The medication’s ability to improve concentration and attention may even backfire when it comes to studying.

Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania who sits on the American Academy of Neurology committee that is drafting new treatment guidelines, recalls a student saying that after she takes her medication, she heads to the library. If she keeps her head down and studies, she gets very absorbed in her work and accomplishes a tremendous amount. But if a friend stops by, she becomes equally engrossed in the chat. Many students report they find themselves absorbed in cleaning their rooms rather than studying.

In people without ADHD, there is even less information about whether stimulants lead to any real academic benefit.

Dr. Farah, who is also head of the Center of Neuroscience & Society, and her colleagues found no significant cognitive benefit from Adderall in students assessed on a number of psychological tests, including neurocognitive performance and I.Q. tests. The paper was published in Neuropharmacology in January.

In a separate study, a statistical review of existing data on the topic, still unpublished, suggests there are “very small effects—not zero but not a whole heck of a lot difference,” Dr. Farah says.

 A version of this article appeared July 9, 2013, on page D1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: ADHD Drugs Don’t Boost Kids’ Grades, Studies Find.

Filed Under: ADHD, Drugs, News

ADHD and Food Allergies

October 25, 2013

Food allergies may be the underlying, and undetected, cause for a child’s behavior problems.  See for yourself the dramatic effect a food allergen can have in the video above.

Using psychostimulant drugs (Ritalin, Concerta, Metadate, Vyvanse, Provigil, etc.) to deal with allergy related behavioral issues not only leaves the underlying cause untreated, but also exposes your child to the potentially serious side effects of these drugs.

No More ADHDRecommended Reading

No More ADHD, by Dr. Mary Ann Block, provides a practical non-drug approach to attention and behavioral problems.

 

Filed Under: ADHD, Alternatives, Drugs, Featured Tagged With: ADHD

National Day of Action to Stop Psychiatric Profiling

January 20, 2013

Martin Luther King Jr. Day
January 21st, 2013

 

CCHR Oregon supports the

National Day of Action to Stop Psychiatric Profiling

 

The reaction to recent events involving gun violence has been an alarming rush to enact laws promoting “Psychiatric Profiling”. These laws would restrict the rights of people labeled as “mentally ill”, and force them to endure harmful, counterproductive, psychiatric interventions.

Investigate the Cause:

There has yet to be a federal investigation into the link between psychiatric drugs and violence, despite 22 international drug regulatory agency warnings on psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects including

  • Aggression
  • Mania
  • Violence
  • Psychosis
  • Suicidal and homicidal ideation
  • 14 recent school shootings committed by those under the influence of, or withdrawal from, psychiatric drugs

Sign the Petition:

Click here to sign the petition:  Call for Federal Investigation of Psychiatric Drugs, School Shootings & Senseless Violence.

Filed Under: Drugs, Events, News, Violence

Oregon Attorney General and 36 others reach $181 million Risperdal settlement

August 30, 2012

Janssen Pharmaceuticals RisperdalJanssen Pharmaceuticals has agreed to pay $181 million to settle claims brought against it by Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum and 36 other Attorneys General alleging that the drug company used unfair and deceptive practices in marketing Risperdal and three related anti-psychotic drugs.

Oregon will receive more than $4.2 million in the case. Janssen is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

“This is our most important case settlement yet involving “Big Pharma,” Rosenblum said. “Some of Oregon’s most vulnerable citizens will be the beneficiaries. I am proud of the major contribution of the Oregon Department of Justice to this result — particularly the efforts of Assistant Attorney General David Hart.”

Hart, assistant attorney-in-charge of the Oregon Department of Justice financial fraud/consumer protection section, handled the case for the state.

The complaint, filed today in Multnomah County Circuit Court follows a four-year investigation. It alleges that Janssen marketed Risperdal, Risperdal Consta, Risperdal M-Tab and Invega for unapproved or off-label uses.

Federal Law prohibits pharmaceutical manufacturers from promoting their products for off-label uses. The complaint alleges that Janssen promoted Risperdal for off-label uses to both geriatric and pediatric populations, targeting patients with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety, when these uses were not FDA-approved and for which Janssen had not established that Risperdal was safe and effective.

It also alleges that Janssen paid doctors to learn about Risperdal’s unapproved uses and gave lucrative consulting contracts to those who promoted and prescribed the drug.

In addition, the complaint alleges that when marketing Risperdal, Janssen misrepresented the risk of diabetes and weight gain associated with the drug and that Jansen marketed Risperdal in nursing homes despite the fact that there are other serious risks associated with using atypical antipsychotic drugs with this population.

As part of the settlement, Janssen agreed to change not only how it promotes and markets its atypical antipsychotics but also agreed to refrain from any false, misleading or deceptive promotion of the drugs. The company also agreed to disclose the specific health risks of the drugs on its product labels and to present balanced information about the drugs’ effectiveness and risks in its promotional materials.

The Attorneys General of the following states and the District of Columbia participated in the settlement: Arizona, Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Source:

Oregon Department of Justice: http://www.doj.state.or.us/releases/Pages/2012/rel083012.aspx

Filed Under: Drugs, News

CCHR logo green 300x300

Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights

All human rights organizations set forth codes by which they align their purposes and activities.  The Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights … Continue reading...

Blogroll

  • AbleChild
  • CCHR International
  • ECT Justice
  • Gwen Olsen the Rx Reformer
  • International Campaign to Ban Electroshock (ICBE)
  • M.O.M.S. Movement
  • MindFreedom International
  • PsychDisorders.org
  • Psychiatric Drug Side Effects
  • Rethinking Psychiatry
  • Thomas Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Repsonsibility

Pages

  • About CCHR
  • Alternatives
  • Big Pharma – Define “Better”
  • CCHR: What we believe
  • Contact Us
  • Donate
  • Drugging our Children: Side Effects
  • Gifts In Memoriam
  • Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights
  • Privacy Policy
  • Psychiatric Drug Side Effects
  • Psychiatric Drugs and Children
  • Report Psychiatric Abuse
  • The Origins of Electroshock “Therapy”

Categories

  • ADHD
  • Alternatives
  • Children
  • Drugs
  • Electroshock
  • Events
  • Featured
  • News
  • Uncategorized
  • Violence

Mailing Address

CCHR Oregon 
PO Box 6662
Aloha, OR 97078
Phone: 503-228-3279

Copyright © 2021 · Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Oregon