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Federal breast-feeding ads censored. New ads resulted in less breast-feeding!

The United States has one of the lowest rates of breast-feeding in the developed world. The World Health Organization recommends that, if at all possible, women breast-feed their infants exclusively for at least six months.

In light of this, it was especially shocking when the Washington Post today revealed that the federal government has been colluding with the formula industry, to keep breast-feeding rates down, by doing what the lobbyists told them to do - cancel a hard-hitting campaing promoting breast-feeding and run a wishy-washy "nice" ad campaign instead.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, breast-feeding decreases the incidence and/or severity of a wide range of infectious diseases and may decrease the rate of sudden infant death syndrome in the first year of life and reduce the incidence of diabetes, lymphoma, leukemia, and Hodgkin disease, overweight and obesity, hypercholesterolemia,  and asthma in older children and adults who were breastfed, compared with individuals who were not breastfed.

Below are the images from the two breast-feeding campaigns.

After the 2003-05 period in which the dandelion ads aired, the proportion of mothers who breast-fed in the hospital dropped, from 70 percent in 2002 to 63.6 percent in 2006, according to statistics collected in Abbott Nutrition's Ross Mothers Survey. In 2002, 33.2 percent of women were doing any breast-feeding at six months; by 2006, that rate had declined to 30 percent.

The formula industry brought in powerful lobbyists, including Clayton Yeutter, to stop the initial campaign. He was agriculture secretary during the administration of George H.W. Bush. In the end, the feds dropped many of the hard-hitting ads and kept the images of dandelions puffs and ice cream scoops that looked like breasts. In the 2004 letter above, Yeutter thanks the secretary of health and human services for modifying the ad campaign.

Clearly, we have a government that cares more about our corporations than us, the people. Anyone wonder why obesity rates are going through the roof and the government has no idea what to do about it?

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

This week's I TOLD YOU SO!

One year ago, on August 16, 2006, when Pfizer still had high hopes for Exubera, I wrote the following about Pfizer's insulin inhaler:

"And this year Exubera was launched, an insulin inhaler used for the treatment of type 1 and type 2 diabetes that has blockbuster potential. According to Pfizer. But look at the Exubra inhaler! It is BIG. A foot long, when unfolded, which makes it feel like a baseball bat. Think your girlfriend would like to haul that out of her handbag while seated in a restaurant? Common sense, folks. Common sense. NO ONE would be caught dead with this foot long pocket rocket in their pocket. Or handbag."

Now Pfizer's vice chairman, David Shedlarz, is admitting that I was right. He said: "Exubera was not our finest day. We made a lot of mistakes with what is a profoundly important therapeutic."

An even blunter assessment was offered by Howard Robin, chief executive of Nektar, which gets royalty and other payments from Pfizer totaling up to 18 percent of the product's net sales, according to some analyst estimates.

During his own call with analysts in May, Robin called Exubera one of the "worst performing products for a new launch that I can ever recall," adding that Pfizer executives "have really done a poor job" selling it.

There is no word about what Pfizer's current CEO, Jeff Kindler, is thinking. Perhaps he doesn't know what to say. After all, a year ago he'd spent only four years in the drug industry, working on lawsuits and legal stuff as general counsel and not a single year in marketing or sales.

As for Hank McKinnell, former Pfizer CEO who made the decision to launch the bong, and then walked away with a cool $200 million in his knapsack last year, clearly shareholders didn't get what they paid for.

Because, when Pfizer was finally going to show the world that they could market an innovative product, they went with the bong and fell on their faces with a bang.

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

A hypochondriac's final words.

Story here.

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

Abbott caught altering entries to Wikipedia

Several drug companies have now been caught deleting important information from Wikipedia, in order to downplay the risk of their drugs.

The first drug company caught messing with the Wikipedia was AstraZeneca. References to claims that Seroquel allegedly made teenagers “more likely to think about harming or killing themselves” were deleted by a user of a computer registered to the drug company, according to Times.

According to Patients not Patents, now it is Abbott Laboratories who've been caught doing the same thing. The group alleges that "employees of Abbott Laboratories have been altering entries to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, to eliminate information questioning the safety of its top-selling drugs."

The tool used to catch these corporate erasers is the WikiScanner, which was developed by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, and it reveals changes to the online encyclopaedia by linking edits back to the computers from which they were done, using each computer’s unique IP address. The scanner has wreaked havoc in news media, politics and among corporations caught redhanded "improving" articles.

Patients not Patents found that in July of 2007, a computer at Abbott Laboratories’ Chicago office was used to delete a reference to a Mayo Clinic study that revealed that patients taking the arthritis drug Humira faced triple the risk of developing certain kinds of cancers and twice the risk of developing serious infections. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006.

The same computer was used to remove articles describing public interest groups’ attempt to have Abbott’s weight-loss drug Meridia banned after the drug was found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke in some patients.

The site’s editors restored the deleted information, but Patients not Patents claim that Abbott’s activities illustrate drug companies’ eagerness to suppress safety concerns.

Jeffrey Light, Executive Director of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group said, “The argument that drug companies can be trusted to provide adequate safety information on their own products has been used by the pharmaceutical industry to fight against government regulation of consumer advertising. Clearly such trust is misplaced. As Abbott’s actions have demonstrated, drug companies will attempt to hide unfavorable safety information when they think nobody is watching.”

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

What readers loved to read on BrandweekNRX today:

1. Abbott caught altering entries to Wikipedia 

2. Vaccine for oral sex.

3. The psychopath test.

4. Pfizer should buy Wyeth. Here's why.

5. My most read blog post - ever.

The psychopath test.

If you pass this test, you may need to see a doctor.

To find out, please read the question below, and try to come up with the right answer.

This is NOT a trick question.

The question is exactly what it is; there are no games. No one I know so far has got it right . . .

A woman went to the funeral of her own mother. There, she met a guy whom she did not know. She thought the man was amazing. Really amazing. She fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him again. A week later she killed her sister.

Question:

What is her motive for killing her sister?

Give this some thought before you look at the answer.

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Answer (highlight text below to read):

She was hoping the guy would appear at the funeral again.

If you answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by a famous American psychologist used to test if one has the same mentality as a killer. Several arrested serial killers were given test and answered the question correctly.

If you didn’t answer the question correctly, good for you. If you did, admit it, and look for a good doctor.

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

What readers loved to read today

Some of the posts from last week are still favorites (1, 4 & 5):

1. Pfizer should buy Wyeth. Here's why.

2. $11,506 for a Rice Krispie treat.

3. Vaccine for oral sex.

4. Scientists Report: Redheads going extinct.

5. My most read blog post - ever.

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

Vaccine for oral sex.

People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests. The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers. One way to avoid this is to use condoms during oral sex. Other experts say that the results provide more reason for men to receive the new HPV vaccine.

Merck & Co.'s Gardasil vaccine is approved for preteen girls to prevent cervical cancer caused by a sexually transmitted virus. Now researchers say boys should also be vaccinated, in order to help stop cancers linked to oral sex.

Bloomberg News writes, "A growing body of research shows that human papilloma virus, responsible for cervical cancer, is also linked to about half of certain throat, or oropharyngeal, cancers. In a research review in the journal Cancer, doctors from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center said scientists should step up studies of the HPV vaccine in boys to expand the vaccine's use."

Recent findings tie the virus to cancers of the penis, anus and vagina, as well as head and neck cancers, which mostly affect males. This points to a need to vaccinate boys before they are sexually active, the researchers said.

Merck is studying the vaccine in boys and plans to seek U.S. approval for that use, said spokeswoman Kelly Dougherty.

(Story continues below.)

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

Most popular - and reviled - fired drug company CEO

And the winner is . . .

. . .  drum roll:

Lars Bildman of AstraZeneca. Or maybe we should just say Astra USA.

Some people claim a book is being written about his story, and former reps and employees have been going on about him, telling memories right here for the last six months.

There is hate and love (a bit too much love according to some) and very little in between, just like any Shakespearean drama.

It all started with a story in BusinessWeek, later he was arrested by federal authorities and charged with 35 counts, including fraud and tax evasion. Astra sued him, claiming he sexually harassed and intimidated employees, destroyed documents and records, and concocted "tales of conspiracy involving ex-KGB agents and competitors...in a last-ditch effort to distract attention from the real wrongdoer; Bildman himself." The suit also said he used company funds to rent yachts and pay for prostitutes.

Bildman plead guilty to failing to report over $1 million in income and agreed to serve 21 months in a federal prison. He also had to pay the government more than $ 300,000 in back taxes and interest.

And here's the article that started it all:

ABUSE OF POWER

The astonishing tale of sexual harassment at Astra USA

The lights were dim, the music was softly romantic. It was the final night of the Astra USA Inc. national sales meeting last June, and pairs of employees were dancing in the ballroom of a suburban Boston hotel. Astra President and Chief Executive Officer Lars Bildman, then 49, was entwined with a 25-year-old sales representative, Pamela L. Zortman. Two onlookers noticed that Bildman, extremely drunk, was running his hands along her back and nibbling at her neck.

Suddenly, Zortman rushed into a nearby rest room. Sobbing, she told other women there that Bildman had tried to kiss her. Zortman, who had worked at the company less than a year, apparently didn't get much sympathy from two longtime female managers present. According to accounts Zortman later gave to two sources, the women told her, in effect: ``That's the way it is at Astra, and you'd better get used to it.''

Not anymore. On Apr. 29, as BUSINESS WEEK was about to publish the results of a six-month investigation into allegations of rampant sexual harassment at Astra, Bildman was suspended and relieved of his responsibilities by Astra's parent, giant Swedish drugmaker Astra AB. The parent company appointed one of its most senior executives, Jan Larsson, to replace Bildman and hired outside counsel to perform a thorough probe.

(Continued below.)

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

Drug trials made in China . . .

Yep, it is happening. China has just overtaken India in number of drug trials, according to FT.

And according to data on www.clinicaltrials.gov, China now has a cumulative total of 510 completed or ongoing trials compared with 471 in India, which had until recently been ahead on both measures.

Of course, we should all be joyous that this will bring down the cost of drug trials for our drug companies.

This, of course, is the beginning of Wal-Mart drugs. Or maybe savings will simply be stashed away in executive compensation, since price cutting was never the drug industry’s forte.

Never mind the fact that China is the country sending us toys painted with lead, poisoning our children, or toothpaste laced with anti-freeze, poisoning anyone foolish enough to eat toothpaste. Or manufacturing tires that explode, killing anyone foolish enough to drive on them. Or . . . I could go on.

But considering how drug companies love to tweak their trials, we are sure they will get exactly what they pay for by accomodating Chinese scientists.

In China, everything is possible. Perhaps a new warning on drug labels will be in place:

"Clinical trial made in China."

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.

$11,506 for a Rice Krispie treat.

That's how much a man in Tennessee was charged by the state's Department of Revenue for the treat, according to his lawsuit.

William J. Hoak thinks that is too much, saying that his Rice Krispie treat was taxed based on the weight of the entire treat - which included cereal, marshmallows and other ingredients - not just the marijuana the treat also contained.

People arrested for possession of illegal drugs in Tennessee are taxed based on the weight of the drug.

And now to the really cool part: People can avoid being fined for tax evasion by anonymously buying stamps from the Revenue Department to be affixed to the drug's packaging.

Tennessee, the state that taxes everything, including illegal drugs.

More here.

- Peter Rost, M.D. is a former VP of Pfizer and the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.