Big Pharma Big Greed The Inside Story Of One Lawyer S Battle To Stem The Flood Of Dangerous Medicines And Protect Public Health

UPDATED AND REVISED EDITION: Throughout his distinguished legal career, Stephen Sheller has relished the role of the underdog, evincing a sharply honed sense of fair play and justice. Early in his career, he represented Black Panthers in Philadelphia when they were arrested on trumped up murder and conspiracy charges. Later, he was in the vanguard of lawyers who took on the tobacco industry in the 1990s and he reprised that strategy a few years later in targeting Big Pharma for its harmful products and their deleterious effects on public health. In Big Pharma, Big Greed The inside story of one lawyer's battle to stem the flood of dangerous medicines and protect public health Sheller tells a tale that is at once deeply personal but also with wide repercussions for the U.S. health care system and the hundreds of millions of Americans whose lives literally depend on it. Decades of litigating against the pharmaceutical industry taught Sheller one irreducible lesson: In too many instances, unneeded and at times dangerous drugs are foisted on the public without adequate warning as to risks, all in the service of boosting industry profits. All too often, achieving block buster status for a patent protected medication becomes an end in itself, as Big Pharma companies manipulate clinical trial data, draft scholarly articles for friendly physicians often in their pay, and market their drugs for uses that never had been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. This last practice proved to be something of an Achilles Heel for the industry. In litigation that resulted in settlement and fines in the billions, companies such as Eli Lilly acknowledged marketing drugs off label to a broad range of patients for whom the medications had never been approved. Sheller's litigation formed the basis for these settlements and the effort is ongoing. He and other plaintiffs' lawyers now are suing Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the adverse impacts of its drug, Risperdal, a second generation anti-psychotic that Sheller and others allege is linked to the growth of female breast tissue in young boys and men. Already there have been several big jury verdicts against Janssen with hundreds of more cases yet to be tried. In the book, Sheller not only recounts his major litigation battles but also makes sweeping proposals for industry reform. To restore regulatory credibility, Sheller proposes that responsibility for testing new medicines be taken away from the industry and given over to hospitals and other public entities partnering with government regulators. Pharmaceutical companies that betray the public trust would risk government- initiated dissolution. Harsh medicine to be sure, but Sheller believes entirely appropriate to the underlying malady.

From Paris to Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically plundered all manner of art and antiquities. But the first and most valuable treasure they looted were the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire. This is the true-life Indiana Jones story of a college professor turned Army sleuth who foils a Nazi plot to preserve these cherished symbols of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. Author Sidney Kirkpatrick draws on recently discovered and previously unpublished documents, including interrogation and intelligence reports, diaries and correspondence, as well as on interviews with all remaining living participants involved with the case, to re-create this thrilling true-life story.

"In the early 1990s, a small group of "AIDS denialists," including a University of California professor named Peter Duesberg, argued against virtually the entire medical establishment's consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Science thrives on such counterintuitive challenges, but there was no evidence for Duesberg's beliefs, which turned out to be baseless. Once researchers found HIV, doctors and public health officials were able to save countless lives through measures aimed at preventing its transmission"--

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

This report reviews engineering's importance to human, economic, social and cultural development and in addressing the UN Millennium Development Goals. Engineering tends to be viewed as a national issue, but engineering knowledge, companies, conferences and journals, all demonstrate that it is as international as science. The report reviews the role of engineering in development, and covers issues including poverty reduction, sustainable development, climate change mitigation and adaptation. It presents the various fields of engineering around the world and is intended to identify issues and challenges facing engineering, promote better understanding of engineering and its role, and highlight ways of making engineering more attractive to young people, especially women.--Publisher's description.

Color print. Business Ethics is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester business ethics course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including case studies, application scenarios, and links to video interviews with executives, all of which help instill in students a sense of ethical awareness and responsibility.