I think we can all agree that Western medicine is built upon a foundation of drugs and surgery. Without either, most doctors would truly be lost as to what to do with a patient.
That’s not to say that we actually help our patients by giving them drugs and putting them through surgical procedures.
But, if medicine is so massively dependent upon drugs, this then means that we are just as heavily dependent upon the pharmaceutical companies that make these same drugs. This has proven to be a very bad relationship that has been shown again and again in the research. Drug companies manipulate doctor’s perceptions from medical school into all aspects of practice life. Drug companies manipulate your perceptions through millions of dollars spent in direct to you advertising.
And this is all the legal stuff.
What you don’t usually hear about Is the illegal stuff. And not just hearsay. We’re talking bona fide criminal justice and case law stuff. This particular article goes into some of the criminal behaviors of the drug companies, including:
1. There have been recent, sharp escalations in the frequency with which many giant multinational drug companies repeatedly engage in illegal criminal and civil activity after previously paying enormous fines and being subject to monitoring.
2. From 1991 through 2012 $30.2 BILLION in criminal and civil penalties were paid by drug companies to federal and state governments.
3. More than half of the penalties were either for illegal promotion or illegally overcharging government programs for drugs.
And this is AFTER some of these companies were forced to sign and adhere to US government mandated corporate integrity agreements (CIA) for five years. In other words, the criminal behavior has become such a culture at these companies that these fines are merely the cost of doing business.
All of this would be bad enough if these companies made toilet paper or cardboard boxes. But they don’t. They develop and manufacture the very drugs that are the foundation upon which medicine is built in this country. The drugs they produce have nothing to do with saving or improving lives. It is all about profit.
It’s time to be scared. Very scared.