“These are sad, hateful people,” he said, “The problem is they often reflect and influence the thinking of people like Brownlee and Lenzer who are considered mainstream.”
“We at CMPI are simply trying to insure that people get the right medicine at the right time,” he says. “No more, no less.”
Major story gone missing
Mr Pitts never misses a change to promote preemption on DrugWonks by publishing new stories about CMPI advisory board member, and former FDA chief counsel, Daniel Troy, who kicked-off the preemption campaign by filing the first FDA brief in support of a drug maker in an SSRI suicide case while serving as chief counsel. However, notably missing in the month of July, is a story on DrugWonks bragging about Mr Troy’s new job at Glaxo. But Ed Silverman reported the news on Pharmalot on July 22, 2008, writing:
“The preemption prince is joining the big drugmaker as senior vice president and general counsel on September 2. This is a coup for Glaxo, because Troy is widely known - some might say notorious - for being supportive of the pharmaceutical industry”.
“He also laid the groundwork for the current legal battle over preemption, which says FDA approval supercedes state law claims challenging safety, efficacy, or labeling. Drugmakers and the FDA argue preemption exists by maintaining agency actions are the final word on safety and effectiveness.”
In response to the news, Pharmalot blogger, Laurie, wrote: “Wow.. GSK takes on the one person who has been the poster boy for all that’s bad with pharma and the FDA…way to help your public relations.”
The fact is, Glaxo hired the “poster boy” while facing mounting legal problems due to concealing Paxil’s suicide risk for decades. With the kinds of insider information he could bring to the table, Mr Troy was already the best man for the job. But also important was likely the fact that he knew people were dying from Paxil for years and never cared.
Glaxo has been under investigation by the Department of Justice since 2004 over Paxil. In June 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported a widening of that investigation. In February 2008, Senator Grassley started a new investigation by the Finance Committee, after an expert witness report in a Paxil-suicide case was unsealed by a court that showed Glaxo knew back 1989, that Paxil patients in clinical trials were 8 times more likely to attempt or commit suicide than patients taking a placebo.
The Committee’s investigation of the money paid to academics also includes Paxil researcher, Dr Martin Keller at Brown University, who oversaw the Glaxo-funded trials on children, and was the lead author on the fraudulent papers used to promote the off-label sale of Paxil to children with false claims that it worked and did not cause suicide.
On June 23, 2008, Mr Pitts made a feeble attempt to throw out some sort of defense for his MS&L client with the DrugWonks headline: “What's Behind the Paxil Investigation?”
“There's money in it, maybe for the plaintiffs attorneys,” he wrote. “But there is also the Holy Grail of overturing FDA pre-emption,” he added.
The main problem with this theory is that Mr Pitt’s buddy, Dan Troy, seems to be the only attorney moving up the pay ladder.
In Stealth Marketers, Ms Lenzer and Ms Brownlee report that CMPI took in more than $1.4 million from the pharmaceutical industry in 2006. Mr Pitts was asked to identify the companies and apparently decided against it. “I don’t want to go into that,” he told Slate.
With all that drug money rolling in, CMPI could surely afford to hire an editor to clean up the blogs of the media expert and his side kick on DrugWonks. Although allowances for errors in typing, grammar and spelling are commonly extended to internet bloggers, the daily ramblings of Mr Pitts and Mr Goldberg appear on the official CMPI website and should at least be legible.
Evelyn Pringle
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