Forest Labs budgeted $100,000 for ghostwriting articles about its antidepressant Lexapro. The news came in a copy of Forest’s 2004 Lexapro marketing plan, unveiled by the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging. [Forest] budgeted $100,000, including “honoraria” for authors, for articles that would appear in medical journals, consumer publications, and on the internet.
… The document will doubtless be of interest to federal prosecutors, who in February sued Forest for allegedly promoting its anti-depressants for pediatric use without FDA approval, and paying kickbacks to doctors to encourage prescriptions. The complaint also alleges that the company hid a negative study that later was used by the FDA in a decision to give both drugs black box warnings.
The document also indicates that Forest expected to put Emory University on its payroll.
******************************
Our anti-depressants are rife.
We give them to you and your wife.
With no ifs or maybes
We give them to babies
And make them pill-poppers for life.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:02PM
That snippet from the marketing plan is extremely eye-opening.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:03PM
Digger: It is. I tried to enlarge it, but I couldn’t figure out how to. Sorry to make my readers squint.
April 22nd, 2011 at 5:52PM
[…] Background here. […]