U.S. Senate Investigation: Medtronic Falsified Research to Promote Medication

Has it now become “all about the money”?

Is patient safety, patient care, patient well-being no longer of concern?

It certainly seems that way.

And this, perhaps better than anything else, serves to prove that the “love of money is the root of all evil.”

The reason why, is that people will do anything to get more of the object of their affection, the object of their love. And, because it is an inanimate object, money cannot in return love those who love it. So the relationship is a “one-way love affair,” wherein one party – the human – spends time, energy, effort and emotion to invest affection in a thing that cannot yield an appropriate return.

For when one invests money, one rightfully expects to profit by receiving money in return. Similarly, when one invests time, energy and emotion, one expects to profit by receiving more time, energy and emotion in return. And yet, time, energy and emotion are things inherently absent in money.

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Medtronic Manipulated Bone Product Data, Senators Say

Medtronic Inc. (MDT) ghost-wrote sections of medical papers and paid physician authors hundreds of millions of dollars in “consulting fees” to promote its bone- growth product Infuse, a U.S. Senate investigation found.

Medtronic, the world’s biggest maker of heart-rhythm devices, helped write, edit and shape at least 11 medical journal articles about the product, which is used to spur bone growth after spinal surgery, according to report released today by the Senate Finance Committee.

The doctors and researchers who were the authors of the studies were part of a $210 million consulting and royalty payments program by Minneapolis-based Medtronic and never disclosed their ties or the company’s influence in their papers, the panel said in its report.

“Medtronic’s actions violate the trust patients have in their medical care,” Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and committee chairman, said in a statement. “Medical journal articles should convey an accurate picture of the risks and benefits of drugs and medical devices, but patients are at serious risk when companies distort the facts the way Medtronic has.”

Study Results

Sales of Infuse plunged after The Spine Journal published studies in May 2011 and June 2011 showing

One reason why medications are so expensive

Big Pharma justifies charging high prices by citing costs associated with Research & Development, and the lengthy process in obtaining Food & Drug Administration approval for new medications.

In some respect, there is validity to such assertions and claims.

However, a problem arises when the term for proprietary ownership of the formula is nearing expiration, and the firm then makes a minor modification to the medication – sometimes, only just changing the pill shape, or color – and then calls it “new,” which allows them to re-initiate another claim for unique ownership.

That is abuse.

However, more than anything, perhaps there is some warrant to discussing a more expedited pathway for FDA approval, which also guarantees patient safety.

Another reason, not mentioned here, is advertising.

Not only does advertising co$t lot$ of money, there is a legitimate concern that advertising to patients to get them to ask for medications from their physicians is not only an ethical lapse, but a medical one, as well. There’s a very good reason why it’s called “evidence based medicine,” rather than “advertising pushed medicine.”

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Want to cut health care costs? Start here.

Posted by Sarah Kliff at 09:00 AM ET, 04/21/2012

Every year, Americans pay $700 million more for cholesterol-lowering drugs than they need to. The reason? Abbott Laboratories.

(Photo illustration by The Washington Post; Original image from istockphoto.com)

Abbott Labs is a pharmaceutical company based in Illinois. About a decade ago, in 2000, it faced a problem. The company had recently acquired exclusive rights to sell Tricor-1, a cholesterol-fighting drug. It was profitable, which was nice, but the best part was this: It was a name-brand drug and Abbott was the only company with rights to sell it.

Drug exclusivity does not, however, last forever: After a name-brand drug has five years on the U.S. market, generics are allowed to come in and compete. That’s what a generic pharmaceutical company wanted to do with Tricor-1. Novopharm submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administrationto produce a generic version of the drug.That was bad news for Abbott Labs: With generics tending to sell at about 80 percent less than brand-name drugs, the new medication had the potential to seriously undercut its Tricor-1 business.

Abbott Labs was able to delay Novopharm by a bit, a story that health-care researchers recount in a recent Annals of Internal Medicine article. The company filed a patent infringement lawsuit that