Posted: December 28, 2013 12:05 AM EST
Modern medicine is incredible. But at the same time, pharmaceuticals are a huge industry, and we should know what they're up to.
1. They intentionally make products ineffective so you need to take more.
Back in 2003, the VP of GlaxoSmithKline, Allen Roses, admitted that most patients do not receive any benefit from prescribed drugs. The drug industry has long been aware of this, and encourages it as a way to keep people paying, though they’d obviously rather not have one of their own admit it.
2. They edit and falsify negative research so the results seem more positive.
Back in the ‘90s, when Glaxo was known as SmithKline Beecham, paid over $5 million to fund studies for the anti-depression drug paroxetine. The results showed that no test subjects benefitted from the drugs at all. Beecham proceeded to chop and screw the results in order to “conclude” that most subjects found paroxetine very beneficial.
3. They handsomely bribe doctors so they make the drugs sound as helpful as possible.
Over two dozen doctors from Las Cruces, New Mexico, received over $300,000 in speaking fees, study funding, meal stipends, and travel reimbursement from drug companies such as Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, in exchange for positive press and biased studies.
4. They make it so setting up a “pharma-free” practice is just about impossible.
The Madras Medical Group of Madras, Oregon transformed themselves into a pharma-free clinic, independent of drug company influence. It was a painfully slow process, as pharmaceutical representatives are dedicated to getting their products in all the right clinics. Sometimes, they will even spy on pharma-free clinics, tapping into their prescription histories electronically and then visiting the clinic to “educate” the doctors there on how they should prescribe drug company meds instead.
5. They fix prices, usually making them way too high.
Recently, China has begun investigations into dozens of their pharma companies, who are suspected of overcharging for their drugs. This is an issue everywhere, but especially in a country like China, which has over 185 million elderly citizens within its borders, and a desperate need for as much inexpensive medication as possible.
6. They overcharge taxpayer-funded insurance programs.
In April of 2003, Bayer agreed to pay $257 million to the federal government, after it was revealed that they were selling the antibiotic Cipro to private insurances like Kaiser Permanente at rock-bottom prices, while taxpayer-funded services like Medicare were saddled with far higher price tags. This was done because groups like Kaiser have more money than Medicaid, and Bayer wanted to keep their cash cow happy.
7. They hire ghostwriters to write positive articles, credited to paid specialists, that downplay known and admitted side effects.
Linda Logdberg, a former ghostwriter for pharmaceutical companies, revealed back in 2011 that writers like her are regularly tasked by their superiors with spinning drugs’ side effects to make them sound not so bad. Medical ghostwriters also regularly utilize confusing double-speak to cover up how a drug’s benefits might only last for a couple hours at most.
8. They take out multiple patents on the same product, to maintain exclusive rights and jack up prices.
Over in South Africa, a country still battling a horrible AIDS epidemic, the government had to step in and announce that they were going to import AIDS drugs from other nations, as the monopoly on patents held by the South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association simply made the drugs too expensive for many of the country’s patients to afford.
Source: councilforresponsiblegenetics.org
9. They endorse off-label (unapproved) use of their drugs.
In 2004, Big Pharma member Warner-Lambert paid over $430 million due to their repeated endorsements of benefits and uses for their drug Neurontin that were never approved by anybody. Neurontin was approved as a supplementary drug for epilepsy patients suffering from seizures, but Warner-Lambert had been pushing it as a miracle drug for bipolar disorder, migraines, ADD, and even Lou Gehrig's Disease.
10. Crooked politicians outright bully any attempts to regulate the drug companies that line their pockets.
During the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, US Trade Representative Sean McCoy is attempting to secure long-term patents for Big Pharma that would delay generic, inexpensive medication that more people can afford. To that end, he has been strong-arming and bullying other countries, badgering them into exhaustion until they ultimately give the politician and his lobbyists everything what they want, which is not at all what the people need.
11. They push expired drugs, or drugs about to expire, to people in the Third World.
Source: riversidevillagepharmacy.com
A British doctor stumbled upon a stash of medicine while in Tanzania. Even though the medicine had a six-month shelf life in tropical African conditions, there was enough of it to last 45 years. This is typical of drug companies, who will routinely sell drugs with quick shelf lives and approaching expiration dates to foreign countries desperate for help of any kind.
12. They also mark up prices for the Third World, with some places paying over 6000% what we pay.
Products costing more overseas than they do in their homeland is nothing new, but drug companies have been known to take it many, many steps too far. In Columbia, for example, certain US drugs are being sold at prices up to 6000% higher than nations such as the US pay.
13. They rely on old, disproven research to back up their claims.
Statin medicines, a supposed wonder drug that could curb cholesterol and reduce heart disease, was proven long ago to barely work at all. That has not stopped its manufacturers from hawking it to consumers though; they simply use old data to sell its effectiveness. Since most people do not bother to check the dates of the research they’re reading, many people have gone on thinking that statin meds were as safe and effective as ever.
14. They’re fighting hard to keep pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient for cooking meth, an over-the-counter product.
In Kentucky, drug lobbyists have spent record amounts of money to keep pseudoephedrine, an ingredient of meth but also anti-allergy meds like Claritin and Sudafed, from becoming a prescription-only product. Despite clear evidence that the chemical is being used in meth labs across the state, and indeed the nation, drug companies are still fighting to keep it over-the-counter, where it’s at its most profitable.
15. They’re regulating e-cigs so they can make money off of them too.
Unless plans change, by 2016 the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will have completely regulated e-cigs and any other “tobacco containing product.” The MHRPA will deem them medicinal products, and require them to be sold in pharmacies, likely under prescription. This means less easy access for people who want to stop smoking, and more money for pharmaceuticals.
Source: theinformationdaily.com
16. They invent diseases and then sell you drugs to treat them.
Eli Lilly was about to lose its patent on the drug Prozac, so it literally made up a new disease -- Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It means absolutely nothing, but their spokespeople sold it well enough to get FDA approval. They then re-named the drug Sarafem, sold it as an anti-PMDD drug, and raked in Prozac profits all over again.
17. They’ll sue anybody who tries to get their drugs from anybody else.
Recently, Big Pharma sued the entire state of Maine because too many of its citizens were importing low-cost drugs from Canada. According to Big Pharma, these actions “circumvent the carefully-constructed closed federal regulatory structure governing prescription drugs and thus pos[es] serious health risks to consumers.” That’s an awful funny way of saying “we want your money NOW.”
18. They promote rapid weight loss pills, despite none of them actually working, and many actively harming you.
Over the past couple years, no fewer than three weight-loss pills -- Qsymia, Belviq, and Cotrave, have been released to the public, despite no diet pill ever working as well as advertised. In fact many diet drugs of the past have actively harmed the public, with Phen-Fen causing heart defects and Meridia making its users suicidal. The new drugs appear to be no different, with low rates of efficiency and a bevy of side effects that will surely reveal themselves over time.
19. Many “natural” herb products are secretly sold by drug companies, and aren’t natural at all.
Source: fernandslancheteria.wix.com
There’s a very good chance those “natural” products you buy as an alternative for Big Pharma are made by Big Pharma. Wyeth produces the popular supplement Centrum, while Bayer is behind One A Day. And most of these products are either not natural at all, or derived from inferior material, since Big Pharma wants to pay as little as possible to manufacture their expensive products.
20. They bury bad information, so learning about harmful side effects becomes virtually impossible.
A prominent member of the British branch of Big Pharma, AstraZeneca, paid out 125 million pounds back in 2010, to settle a series of claims that the drug Seroquel caused diabetes. This side effect was never once mentioned anywhere, and was deliberately ignored by AstraZeneca when pushing the pill onto the public.
21. They’re selling pills to help people with their pill addictions.
Source: themanythoughtsofareader.com
Swedish pharmaceutical Orexo is starting to sell its drug Zubsolv in the US, marketing it as a way to treat additions to prescription drugs such as oxycodone and methadone. In other words, Big Pharma wants to prescribe you a pill to wean you off of prescription pills. That’s so insane, it gives us a splitting headache. Anyone got any pills for that?
22. They’re marketing ketamine -- also known as rave drug Special K -- as a new treatment for depression.
Big Pharma now wants to use Ketamine -- the highly addictive drug known throughout raves the world over as Special K -- as the basis for a new series of anti-depressants. They want to develop “mimic meds,” that trigger the brain the same way as Ketamine does, and prescribe them to patients. Because it works so well on the heads of party-hearty dance machines.
23. New antibiotics to help combat “superbugs” are not being produced because they don’t turn a profit.
A study released over the summer showed that only four of the major pharmaceutical companies are actively developing new antibiotics to combat the superbugs of the world that are resistant to normal meds. Even though they could save lives, antibiotics are expensive to produce and sell for fairly low prices. That’s a bad combination for Big Pharma.
24. They’ve all but abandoned the search for an Alzheimer's cure, because it costs them too much money.
Several members of Big Pharma, including Medivation and Baxter, attempted to produce a drug that would successfully treat Alzheimer’s, to no avail. Sadly, there appear to be no plans to dust themselves off and go back to the drawing board, because they’ve got stockholders to make happy. Thus, pouring billions more into research that isn’t guaranteed to yield results does not seem to be in anybody’s future.
25. They knowingly sold HIV-contaminated blood-clotting products.
Back in 1997, over 5000 people received a class-action settlement of $620 million from the manufacturers of blood clotting products. Back in the ‘80s, these companies insisted these products were perfectly safe for hemophiliacs to use, never divulging that much of the plasma used to make the products was tainted with HIV. Over 10,000 people were infected with the virus this way.
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