Falsified drug studies led to millions of children receiving dangerous antidepressants
NaturalNews.com
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
In 2001, the pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) published a trial known as Study 329, which claimed that the drug paroxetine – known as Paxil or Seroxat – was “generally well tolerated” and that it helped cure depression in children and adolescents. This led to some two million youngsters being prescribed the pill in the next year alone.
(Article republished from http://projectcensored.org)
But the study ignored the fact that the drug may cause serious side effects, including suicide. Re-analysis of Study 329 by a team of independent researchers showed the drug was no more effective than a placebo, and that the risk of harm was significant, with at least 12 out of 93 children taking the drug developing suicidal thoughts. GlaxoSmithKline was fined $3 billion for one of the biggest frauds in American healthcare history.
This is but one example of pharmaceutical industry influence shaping the outcome of scientific research. A recent study, published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, evaluated 185 meta-analyses, and found that one third of them were written by pharma industry employees, who were 22 times less likely to have negative statements about a drug than unaffiliated researchers. Almost 80 percent of the studies had some sort of industry tie, either through sponsorship (funding of the study), or conflicts of interest, where one or more authors were either industry employees or independent researchers receiving industry support (speaking fees, grants, etc.).
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