France to prosecute its drug regulator and Servier in scandal over diabetes drug

France’s drug regulator and one of its leading drug companies, Servier, will stand trial as legal persons over the marketing of the antidiabetes and weight loss drug benfluorex (marketed in France as Mediator), which is believed to have killed between 500 and 2300 people before being pulled from the market in 2009.1

Joining them will be nine other institutional defendants, many of them affiliates of Servier, and 14 people, including the company’s former vice president, civil servants, a former senator accused of watering down an official report on the drug, and a professor of paediatrics retained by Servier who is accused of suborning the senator.

http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j4231

From what remained of his luxury villa in an offshore tax haven, the company's CEO said

"Well they are diabetics, they are going to die anyway, so at least if they give me some money they won't have died in vain"

chris c wrote:From what remained of his luxury villa in an offshore tax haven, the company's CEO said

"Well they are diabetics, they are going to die anyway, so at least if they give me some money they won't have died in vain"

Yes and as we well know diabetes drugs are a cash cow for big pharma, many of the new ones carry a long list of possible side effects  of which some could result in organ damage or even death, and they could be on the market for years before the problems get flagged up

Still trying to decide what to post here

http://www.cardiobrief.org/2017/09/07/cardiology-is-dead-long-live-public-health/

Sometimes Larry seems to have got it, sometimes he seems to have lost the plot again. I assume the blog is read by other cardiologists so don't want to be too sarcastic or cynical.