Avandia Drug Company GlaxoSmithKline get..

Avandia Drug Company GlaxoSmithKline gets a Helping Hand it Didn't Deserve

February 3, 2008. By Corey Van't Haaff

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San Antonio TX: Avandia's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, got an unfair helping hand while many diabetics just got sicker. The diabetes drug Avandia has been linked to heart attacks and other serious physical ailments. But recently, the drug maker got a shot in its own arm when it received advance notice of a peer-review article that was then-to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine. That article was to mention adverse safety concerns surrounding the drug Avandia.

This unfair advantage allowed GlaxoSmithKline to prepare its public strategy to deal with the fall-out from the story well in advance of any negative publicity. That's akin to knowing the score before the game's over. The drug company's sales fell, partly due to the Avandia situation, though the company denies that any senior executive traded stock based on its advance notice of the publication of the study.

A few weeks before the Journal story was due to be published, Steven Haffner, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, faxed a copy of the study to a GlaxoSmithKline employee he knew from working on an earlier clinical trial of the drug. The drug company confirmed this.

The problem is, Dr. Haffner was to have kept the story confidential until its publication. Reviewers for the Journal are required to maintain secrecy and such a breach is a serious matter.

News reports said that Dr. Haffner, in a Nature article, said, "Why I sent it is a mystery. I don't really understand it. I wasn't feeling well. It was a bad judgment."

FDA documents show that GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Haffner some $75,000 in consulting fees and honorariums since 1999.

GlaxoSmithKline stated it was asked for input on the then-unpublished study but declined to do so. Yet the drug manufacturer chose not to advise the Journal it had an advance copy of the study.

The whole situation has further tainted what is already a nightmare for some people. Diabetics, trusting their doctors and the drug manufacturers, took Avandia. Some became sick or even died. To learn now that this betrayal of confidentiality simply better armed GlaxoSmithKline in its PR efforts has to be a very bitter pill for Avandia's victims to swallow.

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If you or a family member have used Avandia and have suffered heart attack, liver damage, or osteoporosis after taking Avandia, please contact a lawyer involved in a possible [Avandia Lawsuit] to review your case at no cost or obligation.
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