Federal authorities this week sued a Chicago psychiatrist accusing him of taking kickbacks from drug companies and committing fraud by prescribing antipsychotic medications for thousands of mentally ill patients in nursng homes. The suit against Dr. Michael Reinstein represents the largest civil case alleging prescription medication fraud. Authorities say that Reinstein submitted over 140,000...

Connecticut based Boehringer Ingelhein Pharmaceuticals Inc. will pay $95 million to end allegations of improper promotion of the stroke prevention drug Aggrenox, the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) drugs Atrovent and Combivent. The Food and Drug Administration has approved Aggrenox to prevent secondary strokes, Combivent to treat symptoms of bronchospasm with COPD. according to...

English physician Ben Goldacre has written a book called Bad Pharma excerpts of which are now being published. I haven't read the whole book yet, which is being published by Fourth Estate next week, but the excerpts are exactly what the doctor ordered--a clear, precise excoriation of the big drug industry from the point...

A former Abbott labs saleswoman has filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit saying the company illegally promoted its cholesterol drug TriCor for uses not approved by regulators including for use preventing cardiac health risks with patients with diabetes. That sales person Amy Bergman said that she was trained, directed, incentivized and encouraged by Abbott to...

A drug Targretin, approved by the FDA only for use in the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, a form of cancer, is being prescribed by some doctors for treatment of Alzheimer's based on a published study suggesting that it may relieve symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease in mice. However, in an editorial published in the...

James Wetta is a multi-millionaire from his activities as a whistleblower of the pharma industry not once by twice and his recent revelations concerning AstraZeneca will result in $45 million to him. The former AstraZeneca sales rep filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company in 2004 and Astra revealed last week that it would...

The largest health care settlement in history reached with GlaxoSMithKline last month revealed that the company paid more than 20 academic researchers to attach their names to a ghost-written article that misrepresented the safety and efficacy of the depression drug Paxil for children. Glaxo paid the government over 3 Billion dollars to resolve the...