Letting Big Pharma Review Its Own Drugs — What Could Go Wrong?

Jul 11 2012, 11:11 AM ET |  Shannon Brownlee & Joe Colucci  | We can’t trust drug companies to disclose product safety hazards when they stand to gain so much from fudging the facts.  When British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) agreed to pay $3 billion in criminal and civil fines for illegal marketing of several drugs and hiding safety from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it probably seemed to many people like fitting punishment. It’s the largest fine ever levied against a pharmaceutical company, and the civil and criminal charges against GSK included marketing its antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin for unapproved (read: unproven) uses, giving Medicaid false information about prices it was charging for the drugs, and failing to report patient safety data about diabetes medication Avandia to the FDA. But even $3 billion is probably not going to get GSK to change its ways — and fines do virtually nothing to protect patients.  Read more