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Are Drug Companies Really This Crooked??

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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.

Western medicine: a confidence trick driven by the drug industry? – (08-12-02)

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Western medicine: a confidence trick driven by the drug industry?

There have been times I have seen the general public realize just how much of a travesty has been played on them by the pharmaceuticals–but at that point I usually wake up in a cold sweat with one of my dogs licking my nose… But seriously, I am strongly against any kind of governmental controls on the costs or practices of the pharmaceutical countries. I would rather see the general public coming to terms with the lack of efficacy or increased efficacy of new drugs over old ones and of the side effects of many medications and the damage to our physiology. Alas, I truly, truly believe that this will never happen and the control that the pharmaceuticals have over many’s daily lives will increase. I do know that there will always be a small percentage of the population that will educate themselves and resist drugs in all cases except the most necessary.

bmj.com 325 (7358): 0h

Read entire article here

Wag the Dog, Healthcare Style

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It’s not jaw dropping news hear that industry has an undo influence on medicine today.  The routes by which industry infiltrates medicine, however, is just short of legendary.

I have always wondered how we got to where we are in medicine.  Doctors are there to help their patients get better and stay better, right?  But at what point did industry (and when I say industry, I am generally referring to the pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers like artificial hips, pacemakers and stents for cardiac procedures) start to influence the relationship between the doctor and patient?

Make no mistake.  These companies are very successful at what they do and they do it because it works.  Every single one of us can be influenced by gifts and wooing, so don’t hold your doctor to blame.

But when the medical profession is no longer questioning the validity of the research and recommendations coming from industry, we’ve got a problem.  How can a class of drugs like the statins, that lower the absolute risk of a heart attack by 1%, rise to be the most successful class of drugs ever developed?  Why are beta blockers still being used for high blood pressure despite a decade of information that this class increases the risk of stroke and diabetes?  The list is quite long.

Maybe it’s become so pervasive that medicine can no longer tell the difference.  In which case, we are lost.

In this particular study, researchers evaluated different aspects of potential influence:

  1. Evidence base production–producing their own clinical trials that support the product.
  2. Evidence synthesis–compiling data that they produce into compelling packets.
  3. Understanding of safety and harms issues–the downplaying of risks, like what we saw with Merck and Vioxx.
  4. Cost-effectiveness evaluation–manipulation of data to make it look like the product is worth the cost.
  5. Clinical practice guidelines formation–guidelines produced by the national organizations (like the American HeartAssociation) are created by members who have financial ties to industry.
  6. Healthcare professional education–infiltration of the medical schools and sponsoring of continuing education lectures.
  7. Healthcare practice–drugs reps guiding doctors’ behaviors through direct contact. Healthcare consumer’s decisions–direct to you advertising, increasing the likelihood that (a) you’ll think you have something wrong with you like “shift work disorder” and (b) you ask your doctor to prescribed THAT medication.

Researchers were able to find that industry plays a significant role in ALL of these aspects of healthcare.  Pretty much every aspects of what we consider “health care” is played out and driven by industry.

Sure, in some cases there is an actual desire to help the patient on the side of industry, but this is far overshadowed by the desire to earn a profit.  And you and your doctor are at the end of the chain that has been manipulated long before it ever got to you.

Think about THAT the next time your doctor wants you to try that “free” sample.