Tag Archives: US Justice Department

How To Sell Drugs to Children — GlaxoSmithKline & Shrinks for Sale

The international pharmaceutical giant took top-prescribing psychiatrists to pricey resorts in Bermuda, Jamaica, Hawaii and other exotic locales where, in between spa services, they could hear speeches from fellow shrinks that the company paid to dither on about how kids should pop its pills.

America’s children were depressed. They needed antidepressants. It was GlaxoSmithKline to the rescue.

Paxil was never approved for use by anyone under 18, but GlaxoSmithKline had 1,900 sales reps visiting doctor’s offices, and pushing the drug for kids.

J&J drug protocols cost taxpayers millions—Lawsuit claims Investigator fired after going public on J&J’s anti-psychotic drug campaign

Allen Jones was curious.

Why did Pennsylvania use a computer program that often pointed to a Johnson & Johnson drug over other, cheaper medicine to treat certain mental illnesses, the investigator for the Keystone State’s Office of Inspector General wanted to know. While the computer program mandated doctors use a new line of anti-psychotic drugs, including Risperdal, sold by J&J’s subsidiary Janssen companies, Jones said he couldn’t find government-funded medical studies showing that these new drugs were any more effective than their generic predecessors.