Several Drug Companies Have Been Caught Deleting Important Information From Wikipedia

[Nomad559]

http://www.brandweeknrx.com/2007/08/abbott-caught-a.html

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.

[CoffeeCat]

1. The drug companies...

...really are evil, aren't they?

They would rather cover up that their drugs can cause teenagers to want to kill themselves--just to
increase shareholder value.

What in the hell has this country come to---when the financial health of drug company executives
trumps the health and well being of the United States' citizens?

I don't trust any drugs anymore as a result of all of this! Do they think that being compulsive
liars and evil bastards will make their stock prices soar?

[Forrest Greene]

3. We Haven't Come To Anything

We've always been there, sorry to say.

[sakabatou]

2. "There's no harm in our drugs."

"And so what if some crummy teenage dies?"

[Blaze Diem]

4. back in 2001 I found out they were witholdind suicide info

on antidepressants. However in European countries it was then mandatory pharma co.s include this info as warning on all labels of such antidepressants as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil.

They had escaped the warning label laws as they operated here in the US.

There's profits to be made..

[sakabatou]

5. Hmm, possibly

But to withhold drug info like that? It's extremely dangerous.

[Blaze Diem]

6. Yes it is, but so is it dangerous to delete info from Wikipedia

that may alert some user/reader to a possible 'heads up' in their own life.

Pharmas do not care.
they obviously were aware of a potential problem when they were required to label in Europe, UK specifically.
US was omitted from labelling until the public demanded attention to the suicide problem.

The drugs in question were from the same manufacturerer that distributed the goods in both UK & US.