Welfare Queens on Fiapta Demand Confidential Peer Reviews

I've been very neglectful in linking to a number of very interesting stories by my compadres in the blogging world. So here is a limited attempt to catch up:

• Pfizer wants to pry confidential peer reviews away from the New England Journal of Medicine. This is utterly ridiculous. Pfizer is facing a pile of lawsuits and is hoping that a peer reviewer might have said something nice about their products Bextra or Celebrex in a peer review, which they could then try to use as a legal defense. This reeks of desperation.
  
• PharmaGossip notes that AstraZeneca is out a cool $215 million for Medicaid drug price fraud in Alabama. Sheesh, and to hear certain politicians and talk show hosts decry the so-called "welfare queens" -- it would appear that AstraZeneca is the real welfare queen!
• Aubrey Blumsohn has a fine sarcastic bit on Fred Hassan. Meanwhile, the British Medical Journal advertising watch continues.
• Philip Dawdy lays down the smack on Judith Warner from the New York Times regarding overmedicated kids.
  
• And ex-GSK CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier is now officially delusional. He can't stand that his company is being judged by those meanies in the media, who seem to just ignore the science which proclaims that all GSK products are wonderful. Don't worry, Garnier is still a hero. .
• Atypical Antipsychotics notes that (whoopee), Vanda Pharmaceuticals has finally submitted its application for iloperidone. The best part is that, apparently drunker than a skunk, Vanda opted to name the drug "Fiapta", which is possibly the lamest name yet for a prescription drug. I've thought previously that this drug looks like a flop, and we'll see if I'm right... Note that an article published in 1995 stated that clinical trials for iloperidone were underway. It is now 2008 and I cannot find a single published clinical trial on the drug. Does that seem strange to anyone else?
  
• Daniel Carlat notes how Lilly concocted an article to put a smiley face on Cymbalta.
• The heparin/Chinese pigs/who needs supervision/high CEO pay with little accountability/yuck story is at Health Care Renewal. It's not a fun read, which is why you should check it out.
• Pharma Giles places his usual brand of sarcasm onto the new FDA guidelines that would allow drug companies to engage in off-label promotion under the guise of science.
  

Next week, expect a post on the ceaseless marketing of Effexor in which researchers (and "editorial assistants") used a combination of a very small advantage for Effexor over other drugs in combination with a "soft" endpoint to make the case that Effexor is so advantageous as to improve public health.