Dr. Drew Pinsky

I bet they made a lot more, in the billions, off of it than that.

I'll bet they have! make you wonder just where those profits are going!

They went into lots of research that allows them to extend ther labels for drugs that they had "No idea" were effective in treating other ailments.
Mercury and arsenic used to be used for venereal disease treatment but they too had these little side effects .

This pushing or promotion of drugs for "off label", non-approved, and sometimes poorly tested, usage is so common it generally barely attracts notice. In some instances, patients are essentially being used as guinea pigs and are prescribed drugs that may either be ineffective or downright harmful, all to put profits into the pockets of Big Pharma. And this is done with the full cooperation and collusion of the physicians who write these prescriptions, while the FDA turns a blind eye to the practice until it becomes so egregious they can collect a whopping fine for the government coffers from the drug company.

I don't know why Dr. Drew Pinsky is being singled out, GlaxoSmithKline was openly bribing doctors to prescribe their products--something other drug companies do as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/03/glaxosmithkline-fined-bribing-doctors-pharmaceuticals?newsfeed=true

The medical profession is responsible for this unsavory alliance with the drug companies because they are placing greed above professional ethics and patient responsibility, and this sort of whoring has been going on for a very long time. The drug companies could not get away with these marketing strategies and "business practices" if the medical organizations made the accepting of such bribes and perks and direct payments unethical and a conflict of interest. I also feel that it should be required that patients be informed, by the prescribing physician, that they are part of on-going research on the drug when they are prescribed a drug for "off-label" use.

You nailed that! It is the medical professionals who should be more responsible.

I can't even count the number of drug companies that come in with their free samples and ask us to pass them out to patients.

Any company that can advertise the way they have, must have billions in reserve. Then again, a doctor told once told me, any drug that has to advertise probably has more problems than cures under it`s belt. Aspirin aside...