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Public Citizen


Self Description

May 2002: "Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts. We fight for openness and democratic accountability in government, for the right of consumers to seek redress in the courts; for clean, safe and sustainable energy sources; for social and economic justice in trade policies; for strong health, safety and environmental protections; and for safe, effective and affordable prescription drugs and health care." http://www.citizen.org/about/

Third-Party Descriptions

March 2012: 'Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to give generic companies greater control over their labels, a rule change that could allow users of generic drugs to sue, but the agency said earlier this month that it needed more time to decide. “Congress can make this problem go away, and the F.D.A. could, too,” said Allison Zieve, the director of Public Citizen Litigation Group. “But we haven’t seen signs that either of them is paying much attention.” A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. declined to comment.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/business/drug-lawsuits-hinge-on-the-detail-of-a-label.html

November 2011: 'The filing is a class-action lawsuit, representing Lee and all other Makhnevich patients who have signed Medical Justice-style contracts. It asks the court to declare that forcing patients to sign the contract constitutes a breach of "fiduiary duty and violations of dental ethics." It also argues that the contract deceives patients by promising not to use patient information for marketing purposes, despite the fact that (according to the complaint) such disclosures are already barred under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. And it asks the court to declare that the contract is unconscionable and void under New York law.'

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/patient-sues-dentist-over-gag-order-causing-medical-justice-to-drop-it.ars

December 2010: '“You are basically testing these devices in an uncontrolled way on a large number of people,” said Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, the director of the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and a longtime F.D.A. critic.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/business/17hip.html

March 2010: "Doctors generally don't tell people they're prescribing drugs pitched to them by pharmaceutical salespeople for unapproved treatments, says Peter Lurie, former deputy medical director of Public Citizen, a Washington-based public interest group. Most doctors don't keep track of FDA-approved uses of drugs, he says."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031905578.html

October 2007: Embroiled in their 16th lawsuit over a Betty Boop fabric, the couple has accepted outside legal help for the first time, from Public Citizen. On the fabric, the cartoon character is wearing a dress that closely resembles a design by artist and fashion designer Ert¿. SevenArts, the British company that owns the rights to Ert¿'s designs, told eBay through a U.S. associate to remove the auction for copyright violation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101802453.html

September 2007: Hoffa and his allies at the Sierra Club and Public Citizen have sued in federal court to stop the government from issuing permits to Mexican freight haulers. Their lawyers argued in court that Mexican trucks pose a danger on the roads and threaten increased human and drug smuggling.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0906mextrucks0906.html

May 2007: Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, a consumer organization, said: “The bill’s improvements in F.D.A. authority are important but inadequate. The bill would increase collaboration between the agency and the drug industry by increasing the agency’s reliance on user fees to finance drug reviews.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/washington/10drug.html

May 2007: “The damage to the public from these white-collared drug pushers surely exceeds the collective damage done by traditional street drug pushers,” Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the director of the health research group at Public Citizen, an advocacy group in Washington, said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/business/11drug.html

February 2007: “There has now been more than a decade for this deregulation experiment to work, and as each state implements it, it just gets worse and worse,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/business/17utility.html

May 2006: But Public Citizen and the National Consumer Law Center are complaining to the media and to Congress that some check-diversion companies -- most notably, California-based American Corrective Counseling Services Inc. (ACCS) -- are engaging in abusive and deceptive collection practices. The groups claim that consumers such as Artz and Pickett are not given a fair chance to make good on their bounced checks before they get threatening letters and are assessed excessively high fees.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/06/AR2006050600185.html

February 2006: The allegations [of cancer caused by chromium exposure--Ed.], by researchers at George Washington University and the Washington-based Public Citizen Health Research Group, are based on secret industry documents obtained by the authors.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/23/AR2006022301783.html

February 2004: The peer-review proposal could dangerously slow down the process of warning the public about health dangers, said Winifred DePalma, regulatory affairs counsel for Public Citizen. "This is explicitly taking control over when the public health and environmental agencies can make an announcement to the public," DePalma said. "You would have to go through peer review before disseminating that information to the public unless peer review is waived."

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62119,00.html

January 2002: According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, 'Enron paid [Wendy Gramm--Ed.] between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/opinion/17HERB.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) Joan Claybrook Person
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Frank Clemente Person
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Gene Kimmelman Person Apr 11, 2004
Organization Executive (past or present) Dr. Peter Lurie M.D. Person Oct 29, 2005
Organization Executive (past or present) Robert K. Massie Person
Founded/Co-Founded by Ralph Nader Person Nov 2, 2007
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Harvey Rosenfield Esq. Person Feb 7, 2006
Employee/Freelancer/Contractor (past or present) Harvey Rosenfield Esq., MA Person May 9, 2010
Organization Executive (past or present) David C. Vladeck Esq. Person Dec 2, 2010
Organization Executive (past or present) Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe Person Mar 11, 2005
Organization Executive (past or present) Allison M. Zieve Esq. Person Mar 28, 2012

Articles and Resources

50 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Mar 20, 2012 Generic Drugs Proving Resistant to Damage Suits

QUOTE: Across the country, dozens of lawsuits against generic pharmaceutical companies are being dismissed because of a Supreme Court decision last year that said the companies did not have control over what their labels said and therefore could not be sued for failing to alert patients about the risks of taking their drugs. Now, what once seemed like a trivial detail — whether to take a generic or brand-name drug — has become the deciding factor in whether a patient can seek legal recourse from a drug company.

 New York Times
Nov 30, 2011 Patient sues dentist over gag order, gets Medical Justice to backtrack

QUOTE: A patient has filed a class-action lawsuit against his New York dentist over her attempts to use copyright law to gag the patient's online reviews of her services. Robert Lee, who recently moved to Maryland, has asked a New York federal court to declare that his comments are protected under copyright's fair use doctrine, that the dentist's attempts to gag him breach dental ethics, and that the "privacy agreement" the patient was forced to sign is invalid and illegal under New York law.

 Ars Technica
Dec 16, 2010 The Implants Loophole

QUOTE: The brief and troubled life of DePuy’s A.S.R. hip points to a medical implant system that is piecemeal and broken on many fronts, critics say. Unlike new drugs, many of which go through a series of clinical trials before receiving approval from the Food and Drug Administration, critical implants can be sold without such testing if a device, like an artificial hip, resembles an implant already approved and used on patients.

 New York Times
Mar 21, 2010 When drug makers' profits outweigh penalties

QUOTE: As large as the penalties are for drug companies caught breaking the off-label law, the fines are tiny compared with the firms' annual revenue. The $2.3 billion in fines and penalties Pfizer paid for marketing Bextra and three other drugs cited in the Sept. 2 plea agreement for off-label uses amount to just 14 percent of its $16.8 billion in revenue from selling those medicines from 2001 to 2008.

 Bloomberg News
Jul 21, 2009 Industry Cash Flowed To Drafters of Reform: Key Senator Baucus Is a Leading Recipient

QUOTE: Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's[Max Baucus] often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500.

 Washington Post
Jul 20, 2009 U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving (Driven to Distraction)

QUOTE: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

 New York Times
Jul 12, 2009 Are 'Grassroots Activists' For Real?

QUOTE: some “grassroots” movements are actually sophisticated marketing campaigns financed by businesses and special-interest groups.
Jun 12, 2009 Lilly Sold Drug for Dementia Knowing It Didn’t Help, Files Show

QUOTE: Eli Lilly & Co. urged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for elderly patients with dementia... even though the drugmaker had evidence the medicine didn’t work for such patients...
Jun 05, 2009 Report finds 'bias in arbitration'

QUOTE: A study says credit card issuers and other businesses are favored over consumers.

 News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Mar 25, 2009 Online Age Quiz Is a Window for Drug Makers

QUOTE: While few people would fill out a detailed questionnaire about their health and hand it over to a drug company...that is essentially what RealAge [Popular online age test] is doing.

 New York Times
Oct 19, 2007 Standing Up To Takedown Notices: Web Users Turn the Tables on Copyright Holders

QUOTE: recently -- in part because of backlash among users and advocacy groups who say copyright holders are abusing the law and wrongfully taking down content -- the challenges to these copyright claims also appear to be increasing.

 Washington Post
Sep 04, 2007 Mexican trucks poised to ride into U.S.: Key lawmaker seeks to halt NAFTA program

QUOTE: Critics say the one-year experiment to test the free-trade measure will unleash a flood of dangerous trucks. It would, they say, increase illegal immigration and drug smuggling and threaten to expose the country to terrorists.

 Arizona Republic
Aug 04, 2007 Two Very Different Paths From Farm to Table: Bifurcated Safety System Means Some Foods Get Less Scrutiny

QUOTE: the Government Accountability Office called federal oversight of the food safety system "fragmented" and put it on a list of "high-risk" programs.

 Washington Post
May 11, 2007 Narcotic Maker Guilty of Deceit Over Marketing

QUOTE: The guilty plea — by Purdue Frederick, an affiliate of Purdue Pharma — is the latest of a number of cases brought by the Justice Department against pharmaceutical makers that accuse them of misbranding, a broad statute that makes it a crime to put false or misleading information about a drug on its label or in ads, or to promote it for unapproved use.

 New York Times
May 10, 2007 Senate Approves Tighter Policing of Drug Makers

QUOTE: "By a vote of 93 to 1, the Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would give the Food and Drug Administration new power to police drug safety, order changes in drug labels, regulate advertising and restrict the use and distribution of medicines found to pose serious risks to consumers."

 New York Times
Mar 22, 2007 F.D.A. Rule Limits Role of Advisers Tied to Industry

QUOTE: The changes are intended to respond to a growing chorus of critics who contend that drug and device makers have hijacked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process by paying those who serve on the agency’s advisory panels. In one famous example, 10 of the 32 advisers who voted in 2005 to allow the painkiller Bextra to remain on the market and the painkiller Vioxx to return to the market despite safety worries had taken money from the drug makers. Under the new rules, their votes would not have counted and the committee would have voted to keep both drugs off the market.

 New York Times
Feb 16, 2007 Rising Price of Electricity Sets Off New Debate on Regulation

QUOTE: The higher rates are touching off a fresh round of national debate over unleashing competitive forces on traditionally regulated electricity markets. Opening up the markets was supposed to lead to savings for consumers. But that did not turn out as regulators predicted. The anticipated competition among energy suppliers never fully emerged as natural gas prices more than doubled in the last decade.

 New York Times
May 07, 2006 Check Bounced? Be Scared

QUOTE: But Public Citizen and the National Consumer Law Center are complaining to the media and to Congress that some check-diversion companies -- most notably, California-based American Corrective Counseling Services Inc. (ACCS) -- are engaging in abusive and deceptive collection practices.

 Washington Post
May 04, 2006 House Lobbying Rules Call for More Disclosure

QUOTE: The House narrowly approved ethics legislation yesterday that would expand the amount of information that lobbyists must disclose about their interactions with lawmakers and would also rein in big-money political groups that spent heavily in the last presidential election.

 Washington Post
Mar 29, 2006 Senate Votes Down Outside Ethics Office

QUOTE: On a 67 to 30 vote, the Senate defeated a bipartisan proposal to create an office of public integrity, which its backers said was designed to strengthen enforcement of Senate rules and bolster voters' trust in Congress in the aftermath of the guilty plea in January of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

 Washington Post

50 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]