Paxil - GSK's Pattern of Bad Choices
Often the story surrounding a drug and its effects goes further than the specific studies related to that drug alone. News has been relatively quiet lately about Paxil and the lawsuits continually being filed against its maker, GlaxoSmithKline. However, to assume that quiet means nothing is happening is to miss the bigger picture. GSK continues to deal with accusations of dishonesty in general, and a company's overall pattern of behavior can be used to build a more complete understanding of the situation. After all, if a company is being dishonest about one type of drug, what's to say it isn’t being dishonest about another?
There has been some recent furor about GSK's once-touted diabetic medicine, Avandia. Prior to 2007, GSK was very quiet about the specific results of its clinical trials and medical studies pertaining to this drug. Lawsuits, however, forced the company to disclose the findings, and in 2007 the New England Journal of Medicine published results showing that GSK had discovered the link between Avandia and myocardial infarctions but had kept a lid on the matter.
Now three years later, the British Medical Journal has published further findings that cast even more bizarre light on the matter. In short, the article found that GSK and publications at the time all were culpable in what amounted to a cover-up of the drug's dangerous symptoms. Avandia was a new and unique way to control diabetes, because it took away the need to constantly poke oneself with needles. Because of this potential benefit and desirability, people in positions to do so downplayed the few, short term studies that to date had only shown inconclusive results, rather than demand longer term studies that would play the matter out more accurately.
The exact degree of culpability is a matter for the courts to decide. However, this kind of information should give anyone in a position to trust GSK pause before extending that trust again.
