Seroquel, sexual favors and unretracted research papers: Martha Rosenberg asks "Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted?"

From CounterPunch Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted? by Martha Rosenberg

Why Are These Fraudulent Papers Unretracted?

by MARTHA ROSENBERG

"According to Science Times[1], the Tuesday science section in the New York Times, scientific retractions are on the rise because of a “dysfunctional scientific climate” that has created a “winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.”

But elsewhere, audacious, falsified research stands unretracted–including the work of authors who actually went to prison for fraud!

Richard Borison, MD, former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center and Medical College of Georgia, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud[2] but his 1996 US Seroquel® Study Group research is unretracted.[3] In fact, it is cited in 173 works and medical textbooks, misleading future medical professionals.[4]

Scott Reuben, MD, the “Bernie Madoff” of medicine who published research on clinical trials that never existed, was sentenced to six months in prison in 2010.[5] But his “research” on popular pain killers like Celebrex and Lyrica is unretracted.[6] If going to prison for research fraud is not enough reason for retraction, what is?

Wayne MacFadden, MD, resigned as US medical director for Seroquel in 2006, after sexual affairs with two coworker women researchers surfaced[7], but the related work is unretracted and was even part of Seroquel’s FDA approval package for bipolar disorder.[8]"

Read the article in its entirety here

MORE ASTRAZENECA NEWS

CEO David Brennan Quits Under Pressure From Investors 

Brennan Quits 

"While the company would not comment about his retirement package, which is still being finalised, Brennan could walk away with about £5m – after receiving more than £9m in pay, perks and shares last year.

Shares in the group, which also announced a 38% drop in three-month profits to £1.34bn and a reduction in its 2012 earnings target, were the biggest fallers in the FTSE 100, down 6.1% at £26.66, wiping £2.2bn from the company's market value.

Brennan will be replaced temporarily by finance director Simon Lowth from 1 June. Former Volvo boss Leif Johansson will take over as chairman from Louis Schweitzer, 69, on the same day – three months earlier than planned. Johansson will then lead the hunt for a permanent successor to Brennan. Headhunters Spencer Stuart have been hired to scout out internal and external candidates.

Brennan, 58, said he had been contemplating his departure for some time and told the board formally of his intention to quit on Wednesday, following private conversations with the chairman. The board then decided to accelerate the process by appointing Lowth as interim CEO, a move backed by Brennan.

Both Brennan and Schweitzer were reportedly encouraged to retire earlier than planned by non-executive directors on the board. However, Brennan insisted: "The decision to retire was entirely my decision. I've been contemplating it for a while. It was time to give someone else the chance to take the company to the next level."

He said he wanted to spend more time with his family (he is married with four grown-up children and has six grandchildren) and to "figure out ways to influence healthcare from a different position"."

AstraZeneca (Seroquel) CEO David Brennan sees huge pay jump - HOW CRIME PAYS QUITE HANDSOMELY

AstraZeneca (Seroquel) CEO David Brennan sees pay jump to £9.1m - HOW CORPORATE CRIME PAYS QUITE HANDSOMELY

As countless injured Seroquel litigants are now being pushing & dumped into the streets by unscrupulous ambulance chaser law firms (many of those will cont. to suffer on in abject poverty without ever seeing the slightest shred of justice unto their death); And even after those DOJ (Department of Justice) fines, the massive health damage inflicted upon the general public, the ever growing volumes of documented corp crimes: AstraZeneca Chief David Brennan sees pay jump to £9.1m.

That's right folks, in that other select members only  (TO BIG TO HOLD ACCOUNTABLE) world of corporate crime, pay offs, political wrangling, billion dollar legal teams, and the untold billions in ill gotten profits... CRIME PAYS....& it PAYS OFF BIG TIME

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From The Telegraph UK

AstraZeneca chief David Brennan sees pay jump to £9.1m

AstraZeneca chief executive David Brennan saw his total pay climb to more than £9.1m in 2011, after an increased payout from a share award which vested last year.

Mr Brennan's 2008 share award also vested last year, with a value of £5.8m, the annual report shows. Photo: PA

 

Telegraph staff

10:20AM BST 27 Mar 2012

The pay hike happened despite concern about Astra's pipeline of new drugs, as it faces a looming "patent cliff", with several of its best-selling medicines losing exclusivity and facing competition from cheaper generic versions in the next few years.

Last week, the company had to pull the plug on an anti-depressant it was developing, incurring a $50m (£31.3m) charge, and in February announced 7,000 job cuts to save money.

Mr Brennan's base pay rose 2.5pc to £997,223 in 2011, and including a bonus and other payments, was up 11pc to £3.37m, according to the pharma company's annual report.

His 2008 share award also vested last year, with a value of £5.8m, the annual report shows.

The size of the share award was increased by 25pc by the board, after Astra came top of its peer group between 2008 and 2010.


Mr Brennan turned down any increase in his base pay for 2012, the report shows.

THE CLIENT DUMP - AstraZeneca Seroquel - The Miller Firm LLC - Saiontz & Kirk, PA "YouHaveALawyer", Ennis&Ennis PA - Pharmaceutical Tort Mills, Sleazy Liars, and Greedy Scoundrels

Micheal J. Miller - Chief Liar @ The Miller Firm LLC

Saiontz & Kirk, PA -  Non-Participant Co-counsel & Tort Legal Mill case gatherers & sellers

THE CLIENT DUMP - AstraZeneca Seroquel - The Miller Firm LLC - Saiontz & Kirk, PA "YouHaveALawyer", Ennis&Ennis PA - Pharmaceutical Tort Mills, Sleazy Liars, & Greedy Scoundrels

Well, we all knew this was coming....we just didn't know exactly how The Miller Firm LLC was going to try justifying their constant lies and magical settlement approval % manipulation. Today I received a copy of this letter below along with some enlightening correspondence from a long time trusted source.

My source stated that this "DUMP" letter is packed with misrepresentation & outright lies that have been conjured up by The Miller Firm LLC to avoid the appearance and undeniable reality that they have or are in the active process of a targeted and purposeful client dump in an unethical scheme to force a rejected settlement through solely for self gain.

My source went on to pin point inaccuracies in this DUMP letter starting with deceiving legal speak in the opening sentence stating:

 My "source" unequivocally states that Saiontz & Kirk P.A. was not hired to investigate a claim, but to represent the "source" in a valid, evidenced, and documented case against AstraZeneca.

The "source" stated that they did not hire The Miller Firm LLC to represent them in any way, shape, or form. In fact, Saiontz & Kirk P.A. sold the "sources" case to The Miller Firm LLC, while having no active involvement or participation as Co-counsel in the Seroquel Litigation from that time on. In fact all client questions & inquires were automatically forwarded to The Miller Firm LLC without their response once the sale had occurred.

Now, onto the most important point and evidential lie in this "DUMP" letter. My source stated that they "NEVER" "EVER" requested that their case be closed. In fact they sent in a valid appeal letter outlining their concerns within the 7 day time limit constraints The Miller Firm LLC & the Garretson Resolution Group placed on appeals, and for signing onto or not signing onto the settlement process.

 That appeal  letter was completely ignored by The Miller Firm LLC. In fact on numerous occasions in direct correspondence with The Miller Firm LLC; The Miller Firm Representatives stated that they were not going to take a single case to court, none were worthy of trial, and there would be absolutely no renegotiation of the settlement terms with AstraZeneca.

The Miller Firm LLC is acting today & as were they then; they are the sole cause or catalyst behind any and all separation of legal representation. For The Miller Firm LLC to even imply that the "Source" requested that their case be closed constitutes a totally fraudulent statement and most egregious blatant lie.

Who shall you the reader believe? Let's just match & compare the signatures on the "DUMP" letter below, to the THREAT letter Mr. Miller denied he wrote to Reuters News and Insight. In fact Miller & his firm, (including co-counsel) all appear to have some serious problems related to telling the truth and subsequent honesty.

So why might you think a request for being relieved of contractual obligation or being DUMPED directly by the Miller Firm LLC makes such a huge difference in this settlement going forward?

  Because The Miller Firm appears to using this misinformation/lies to drop clients from equations which directly skews the settlement acceptance percentages for this pay out proposal.

So instead of having a 40% rejection rate or 249 client rejections. The Miller Firm appears to have jettisoned most of those clients, and then went about the nasty business of recalculating the approval percentage numbers with the approximately 374 remaining approval clients to reach that magical 93% approval threshold to submit to AstraZeneca to cash in on their pay day.

The only problem here is that the clients didn't ask for their cases to be closed...they simply wanted to be properly represented or sent a notice of being released because they rejected the settlement by their original counsel. The Miller Firm is playing unethical slight of hand here...and are clearly attempting to erase the voices & rights of those injured parties that rejected this insulting settlement by closing their cases and then acting like they never existed to the calculations, the courts and to AstraZeneca... That is about as sleazy, disingenuous, and underhanded as it gets folks...

This is the 7.4 million dollar question that must be answered? Has The Miller Firm LLC & Co-counsel conspired against one segment of clients they have a sworn legal & ethical obligation too represent; to unequally represent another segment of clients they represent, solely for their own self gain & personal business interest?

This is the heart felt message I am sending out to the DOJ "Department Of Justice" & Federal Courts; are you listening to the actual injured parties and clients yet.....please do! 

THE FIX IS IN - The Miller Firm LLC says they have magically reached settlement threshold & are presenting results to AstraZeneca in an attempt to cash in on the Seroquel Litigation

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! for all those injured or killed by Seroquel! it's settled Suckers

 THE FIX IS IN  - The Miller Firm LLC says they have magically reached settlement threshold, & are presenting results to AstraZeneca in an attempt to cash in on the Seroquel Litigation

In the continuing saga of "How the Seroquel Settlement World Turns" The Miller Firm Seroquel Update Recording today (*800* 882 -2525) announced they have reached the required number of settlement packets to move forward with asking AstraZeneca to release funds. 

Of course The Miller Firm does not say how many settlement approval packets they have actually received, or how many clients they have dumped to the streets in pursuing this magical threshold mark of 93% approval.

 This is all very secretive stuff that The Miller isn't sharing with their Clients or anyone else except AZ (you know the clients, injured parties, those people they are supposedly working for). Though one must seriously & reasonably wonder out loud what's really going on here; especially when a firm has been sitting at a 40% rejection rate for a year, and then in three weeks time somehow pulls a settlement agreement rabbit out of thier hat so to speak. 

This is why interested parties and clients are asking & calling for an investigation by Federal authorities @ the Department of Justice and the Court. Not only does the documented actions of The Miller Firm not passing the ethical & professional smell test....shall we start throwing around nasty words like "Fraud"? "Racketeering"? "Conspiracy"? or other related pleasantries to garner attention to the Injured Parties plight....The time has now come to have this secretive & unsavory curtain pulled back for all to see...

We know that The Miller Firm LLC and non-participant co-counsel have been tooting the settlement horn with their cheerleader buddies at the Garretson Resolution Group & AstraZeneca for over a year now. From the clients I've had correspondence with...The Miller Firm has quashed any & all conversation, inquiry, or mention of further negotiations or any chance of preparing their cases further for trial. 

There are so many questions, yet The Miller Firm & co-counsel refuse to answer any and all questions that don't directly refer to getting this settlement approved, or getting that settlement cash in their pockets.  

This blog has chronicled this secretive, often threatening, and closed door  process for almost a year now....Injured parties that are refusing this insulting & unfair offer are no closer to receiving legitimate counsel, a court hearing before a jury of their peers, or finding even the most remote form of justice now, anymore than they were then. 

This is a testament to how truly perverted and corrupted our legal system, the law profession, and the courts have become. It seems or appears that only the wealthy, elite, politically connected, corrupted, and those recognized into the small members only club receive the treasured promise of the courts and justice in America...The rest receive what has been written on the pages of this blog....it's simply insult added to injury....

I invite you the reader to go back & read through this blog's journey over the past many mouths & ask yourself this question; Have injured parties in the Seroquel litigation received anything that can be taken as, would be construed as, or closely resembling justice from the courts, media, their own legal representation, and most of all....from the AstraZeneca corporation that with forethought and malice caused them grave injury or death with the drug Seroquel? 

as they say....this ain't over until the last Seroquel induced fat lady sings.... 

But then again...will injured parties even be dealing with AstraZeneca six months or a year down the road...or some other huge corporate entity?
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from MM&M - medical, marketing & media

AstraZeneca's patent plight points toward takeover: analyst

Deborah Weinstein

March 13, 2012

 Despite a brimming pipeline touted by execs earlier this year, storm clouds are gathering for AstraZeneca, and the best way to weather them is through a takeover, says one analyst.
If it wants to deliver results, the UK drugmaker's dwindling set of options really boils down to one: take over a company with a pipeline that will keep it afloat, wrote Tim Anderson of Sanford Bernstein.

In a note titled, "Something's Gotta Give. But When & Why?" Anderson writes of a "left for dead" attitude by many investors towards the company. “AZN faces a prolonged, multi-year patent cliff that gives it among the steepest revenue and EPS declines of the different US and European companies we cover,” Anderson noted, referring to a slew of patent expirations that start in 2012 and run through the next the next four years. Among those aging out this year are anti-psychotic Seroquel and blood pressure drug Atacand. Seroquel IR and XR brought in over $6 billion in sales for the company last year, and Atacand brought in almost $2 billion. Blockbuster Crestor ($6.6 billion in sales last year), already generic in some European markets and facing a threat from off-patent Lipitor in the US, is scheduled to lose US exclusivity in 2016.

click on the link above to read the rest of the article....

AstraZeneca Sues the FDA to extend Seroquel patent & profits - The outrageous hypocrisy of it all

AstraZeneca  Sues the FDA to extend Seroquel patent & profits - The outrageous hypocrisy of it all

Yes, it's beyond ludicrous I know....but those very same greed mongering corporate thugs @ AstraZeneca who have stolen literally mountains of money by their blatant acts of illegal marketing, political pandering & deceit, and by hiding the dangerous & deadly side effects of the drug Seroquel while making it a multi-billion dollar a year block buster; are now suing the FDA because the soon to be released generic version of Seroquel doesn't have the exact same label warning incert as the AstraZeneca patented version. 

Now, very few rational people are going to argue that full, safe, and complete product labeling isn't a good thing. But let's get real here....AstraZeneca has never been concerned about safety or patient health when it comes to Seroquel...they sure as hell didn't want consumers (or anyone else for that matter) knowing all the dirty secrets and dangerous details of this drug when marketing Seroquel into a mega billion dollar per year profit maker. Now they want to hold on to their deadly cash cow patent even longer...please give us all a break...this is yet another case of the special & privileged corporate elite abusing the legal system, the citizens of America, & others from around the world purely for greed's sake.

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From the Pharma Exec Blog

AZ's Seroquel Battle with FDA: A Mark of Desperation?

By Guest Blogger | Published: March 14, 2012

By Ana Nicholls, Healthcare Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Is it a mark of desperation? UK-based pharma company AstraZeneca has resorted to suing the US Food and Drug Administration in a bid to stop it from approving generic competition to Seroquel, the company’s blockbuster anti-depressant, before December 2012. The core patent for Seroquel IR expired in September last year, and its paediatric patent runs out this month, although Seroquel XR (the later version) still has protection till 2017.


The FDA has yet to approve a generic version, and AstraZeneca is arguing that it should not do so. The company claims that important decisions have still not been made over warning labels on the generic versions of Seroquel IR, which need to mimic those on the original, while it still has data exclusivity rights stemming from the clinical trials it has conducted.


AstraZeneca tried a Citizens’ Petition against the FDA earlier this month, with no joy, so it is now trying a lawsuit. The case is a long shot, but the costs will certainly be far lower than the losses the company will incur when Seroquel’s patent expires. The drug generated sales of US$4.3bn worldwide last year, of which US$3.3bn was in the US. Moreover, if AstraZeneca wins, then it (and other companies) may also have developed another way of extending protection for many of the drugs that are coming off-patent.


If so, that would be very welcome news in this, the steepest year of the patent cliff. This year, around US$27bn-worth of blockbuster sales will be exposed to generic competition in the US, according to Fitch Ratings. AZ, along with Pfizer and Forest Laboratories of the US, is one of the companies hardest hit. AZ calculates that it lost almost US$2bn in revenue during 2011 as a result of generic competition. Other companies have tried different tactics to protect their patents – Pfizer, for example, struck exclusivity deals with pharmacy benefits managers to protect sales of Lipitor after its US patent expired late last year.

Yet the mood in the US is firmly against pharma companies who are seen as blocking competition, making the likelihood of AZ winning its case appear remote. Though attempts to legislate have foundered, the current US government has campaigned against what it dubs “pay-for-delay” tactics, which mainly involve deals between pharma companies and their potential generic competitors. The chairman of the Federal Trade Council Jon Leibowitz claimed last year that such arrangements cost consumer US$3.5bn a year in higher drug prices.

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Once again in this article above, Seroquel is being referred to as an antidepressant drug - so let's make it absolutely clear, and correct once again this often used blatant mistake reported by the main stream media & others.

Seroquel is not an antidepressant drug...it is a powerful neuroleptic drug (anti-psychotic).

neuroleptic drug - tranquilizer used to treat psychotic conditions when a calming effect is desired

antipsychotic, antipsychotic agent, antipsychotic drug, major tranquilizer, major tranquilliser, major tranquillizer, neuroleptic, neuroleptic agent