Wellness care instead of disease management, Soldiers dying in their sleep, omega 3 for depression, Pfizer ends pediatric drug trial: Friday news and blogs

Healthcare vs. disease management — Healthy Skeptic — Wellness care is what we need. Disease management is what we have. –Wellness care would save insurance companies billions of dollars each year. But it would devastate the bottom lines of the pharmaceutical industry.– Wellness care is what I will offer my patients. And it’s the vision I have for what medicine could be here in the U.S. and elsewhere. — I’m just not holding my breath. Until we can lessen the influence of Big Pharma, disease management will rule.

Dying In Their Sleep: The Invisible Plague Attacking U.S. Soldiers — Huffington Post — Struggling with PTSD compounded by grief over the death of his brother, Andrew sought help from VA doctors. Their first line of defense was to prescribe him 20 mg. of Paxil, 4 mg of Klonopin and 50 mg of Seroquel. These medications helped at first, but later proved ineffective. Instead of changing the course of treatment, the doctors responded by continually increasing his dosage until the Seroquel alone reached a whopping 1600 mg per day. Within weeks of Andrew’s death, three more young West Virginia veterans died while being treated for PTSD with the same drugs, prompting Stan and Shirley White to begin a mission to find out what the deaths have in common.

Pfizer Ends Pediatric Bipolar-Drug Trial Before It Starts — WSJ — NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Pfizer Inc. (PFE) has decided not to proceed with a late-stage clinical trial of its antipsychotic drug Geodon in children with bipolar disorder, a controversial area for the drug. — The New York-based pharmaceutical giant still plans to pursue pediatric bipolar approval of the drug, which had 2009 sales of $1 billion, a spokeswoman said. The company suffered a setback in that effort last year when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined approval and requested additional information. — Geodon already is marketed to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults.