The Rise of Big Pharma
The Rise of Big Pharma
There are many direct and indirect causes of the current epidemic of fungal dis-eases. Heading the list of direct causes is our reckless use of man-made, synthetic chemicals called drugs. They are some of yeasts’ favorite foods.
“A medicine is always directly hurtful; it may sometimes be indirectly beneficial. I firmly believe that if most of the pharmacopoeia were sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for Mankind and all the worse for the fishes.”
…Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D. (1809-1894)
Let me be very clear. If I were in an accident, broke a bone, needed stitches, badly burned, or some other medical crisis, I would want to be in the emergency room of a good hospital or trauma center, seeking the most competent medical care possible. Drugs for pain, anesthesia, IV hydration, X-rays, etc., are godsends in these situations. Holistic care can come later.
The United States has the best in the world when it comes to emergency and trauma care. We are fortunate to have state-of-the-art diagnostic tools in physicians’ hands. There are times when prescription drugs are needed.
However, of all the drugs produced in the world, Americans take more than half of them, even though we constitute only 4.4 percent of the world population. Today and every day in the United States, 48.9 percent of people take one or more drugs. Every year in the United States, four billion prescriptions are filled, costing patients, the government, and insurance companies $325 billion.
All healing was natural until the mid-nineteenth century. Our word, physician, comes from a root word meaning nature! Physicians were trained to treat dis-ease with herbs, homeopathics, and other natural methods. The word medicine, which comes from the Latin verb, medico, and means “I drug”, gradually gained acceptance. The natural ways were replaced, opening the door for the growth of modern medicine as we know it today.
In order to further the interests of the modern “physician,” a group of doctors established the American Medical Association (AMA) in the United States in 1847. Its stated goals are to protect the interests of American physicians, advance public health, and support the growth of medical science. It is a union for doctors and others in the medical field, and is privately run by its dues-paying members.
Shortly after the AMA was established, it quickly banned all homeopathic physicians from their “club” and proceeded to label all homeopathic remedies as “quackery.” Homeopathy became a “forbidden medicine.” Anyone who didn’t conform to AMA’s rigid codes was criticized or thrown out of the association. It quickly closed half the medical schools and half the hospitals and began a fifty-plus-year-attack upon chiropractic and osteopathy. It wasn’t long before the AMA turned into a medical monopoly. Once the AMA was in control of medical schools, it decided that only those who graduated from schools it permitted could practice medicine. Since it controlled the schools, it controlled what was taught, how to use prescription drugs.
In the past, if the AMA didn’t approve of certain health care methods, it worked perseveringly to discard them from hospitals and suspend the licenses of any doctor who employed them. In its efforts to eliminate competition, it has often coerced state licensing boards and the U.S. Congress into passing laws outlawing natural healing methods. Any non-MD practitioners using them, such as chiropractic physicians, homeopaths, osteopaths, midwives, herbalists, and acupuncturists were sanctioned. It has failed in these attempts due to the overwhelming evidence of their efficacy and a huge public backlash. Way to take a stand! Now, many of these natural healing methods are now mainstream. Praise God!
Since the AMA failed in its attempts to control medicine, it has regrouped and joined forces with allies in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the drug industry to target aggressively those who advocate natural healing methods. It is illegal for anyone to accurately describe the health benefits of the nutritional products he sells. Illegal! Now clinics and nutrition-oriented websites are coming under their fire.
It is alarming the number of raids carried out by the FDA on health food stores, clinics, and nutritional supplement companies in the last twenty years. All over the country armed police marshals and FDA officials have directed surprise raids on legitimate businesses and medical clinics, terrorizing employees, burning literature, seizing files, mailing lists, lab equipment, personal property of employees and the supplements. In many cases charges were never filed and confiscated property never was returned. In all of these incidents, the constitution of the United States and the right of free speech were also confiscated.
It is the position of the FDA that there is no such thing as an herb, vitamin or superfood that has any ability to prevent, treat, or cure any disease or health condition. Anyone who claims benefits from them is branded a criminal by the FDA and is subject to arrest. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2009 sent threatening letters to 130 companies selling dietary supplements, telling them if they made any health claims for their products they would be subject to confiscation of customer records, banking and financial records, and all their inventories! Non-compliance meant arrest, imprisonment, and eventual trials in the FTC’s own court, which is subject to no law. There is no right to trial by jury as the FTC’s own judges are appointed by the FTC itself. Most of the defendants plead guilty rather than face enormous fines and legal expenses or go to jail.
The malicious persecution by these powerful government agencies (together with the AMA and drug companies) should make us fearful of what they might do next. Power corrupts. These FDA and FTC regulations amount to the gagging of legitimate information the public needs to know about herbs and natural supplements, and is a suppression of our rights to free speech. Government medical bureaucrats have become the sole source of official information and they get their orders from Big Pharma, while you and I are picking up the bill! These and other so called “experts” are the people on government and/or pharmaceutical payrolls who are silencing the debate. Speak up and let your congressmen know you want these gag regulations lifted so we can make informed choices in our future.
In the last fifty years the membership of the AMA has been dwindling slowly. It has recently been making efforts to improve its image and boost its membership. Even so, it remains a powerful lobby.
The AMA has become the pharmaceutical industry’s and Big Pharma’s silent partner over the years. The combining of the drug industry, AMA, and medical schools was inevitable. The medical model they use relies heavily on drugs, surgery, and hospitalizations instead of natural and true healing practices. Together they created the drug-based paradigm for physicians we see in place today. Fueling the rapid rise in the use of synthetic chemicals and the creation of the increasing monster we call Big Pharma.
This may prompt you to ask, who or what exactly is Big Pharma?
Big Pharma is used to refer to thirty or more pharmaceutical companies. They include American companies, multi-national companies, and other companies all over the globe.
Most are publicly-traded businesses that compete savagely among themselves for market share, and are obligated to their investors and their bottom lines. All are profit-based businesses, and they are profitable only as long as we are SICK OR CHRONICALLY ILL. They are not in business to heal. They are in business to make a profit for their shareholders and have little vested interest in curing dis-ease. With no profit for shareholders, they would have to go out of business.
I feel that Big Pharma has lost its moral compass. It has forged a fast track to riches by delivering symptom relief instead of turning it enormous energies and resources to discovering the cause of dis-eases. Only when causes are established can true cures be found.
Instead, Big Pharma has become a multi-billion dollar business whose purpose is having everyone take pharmaceuticals, from birth to death. It ensures their survival. Big Pharma is in the “business of dis-ease.” It is managing the continuation and the expansion of dis-ease with their synthetic chemicals. The symptoms and side effects from these chemical drugs, most of which are toxic and cause damage to your internal organs, create a whole new set of “dis-eases” for which Big Pharma must create even MORE drugs as treatments. Do you see the perpetual cycle?
Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), announced they will be making the recommendation of giving cholesterol-lowering drugs to children as young as eight! (Even though no long term studies as to the safety and efficacy of statins on adults, or children, have ever been conducted!)
Today we are barraged with ads for patented, synthetic drugs that treat every dis-ease or condition imaginable. Advertising dangerous antibiotics, statins, anti-depressants, medications for high blood pressure, gout, diabetes, heart disease, and migraines. The list is endless. Keep in mind no cures, just symptom relief. Big Pharma’s mantra continues to be, “No one can be well or get well without our chemicals.”
And for some reason, we continue to fall for their hype and spin. Why?
Even though there are many good physicians who write prescriptions conservatively, today so many people are taking so many drugs that it has lead to polypharmacy. Polypharmacy refers to the poisonous chemical cocktail of multiple drugs which can cause dangerous interactions, especially in the elderly, and is directly responsible for many hospital admissions! So, Big Pharma, instead of researching dis-ease in search of cures, has chosen instead to treat symptoms. That way they cannot only create the drugs to treat the symptoms, but they can create more drugs to treat the new “dis-eases” caused by drugs!
For example, Strattera, is a drug that treats ADD and ADHD. ADD or ADHD, which may be caused by drugs (vaccines), being treated by another drug, Strattera. Drug companies get to make money both ways. By both “causing” a dis-ease and then “curing” it, all with government assistance and approval. Big Pharma’s investors and bottom lines are well served and dis-ease is maintained as we willingly empty our pockets for their products.
In 2007 the global market for pharmaceuticals topped $693 billion. This includes branded prescription drugs, generic prescription drugs, and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs.
Dis-ease is big business. That makes prescription drugs big business. Next to software, drugs have the highest profit margin of any industry in the United States. Drug companies have been known to put markups on their drugs. Big Pharma claims it needs these markups for research and development for more drugs.
Is it any wonder Medicare and everyone else is going broke?
Pharmaceutical companies are the biggest lobbyists. In pursuing profits drug companies employ lobbyists and spend billions on “physician marketing”, a way of describing the practice of wooing, wining and dining, and indoctrinating doctors into prescribing their medications. Billions on lunches for the office, gifts, sponsored parties and events. Many MD’s routinely receive huge bonus checks from drug companies for prescribing their drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies donate millions of dollars annually to medical schools. More than $11.5 million was “donated” to Harvard Medical School alone in 2008, set aside for “research and continuing education classes.” Astoundingly, 1,600 professors and lecturers at Harvard (out of 8,900) admit that they or a family member had business ties to drug companies that could influence their teaching or research. No medical professor can teach unbiased and truthful information if he or she is being paid off by drug companies.
However, there is always hope! In 2009 a group of 200 Harvard Medical School students concerned that pharmaceutical industry scandals, billions of dollars in fines, lawsuits, proof of faulty, sloppy and biased research, and hyped marketing claims have tarnished the medical profession, confronted the school’s administration demanding that pharmaceutical industry influence in the classroom and faculty be stopped. My hat goes off to those moral and ethical students for making efforts to clean up their medical education. Bravo!
In the January 7th, 2008 issue of Science Daily, a study reported that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent almost twice as much on promotion and advertising as it does on research and development. That shows where their true interests lie!
One of the promotional goldmines for Big Pharma is called “off-labeling.” It is a form of marketing to doctors that encourages them to prescribe drugs legally for dis-eases not approved by the FDA in order to increase profits. It’s illegal for drug companies to perform off-labeling, but legal for doctors. For example, Neurontin, an epilepsy drug, was marketed to doctors for pain management, bi-polar disorders, shingles, fibromyalgia and migraines as well, even though it was not approved by the FDA for those conditions. What was the result? U.S. annual sales of Neurontin went from $98 million in 1995 to nearly $3 billion in 2004. A whistle-blower and employee of Parke-Davis filed a lawsuit against the company charging that “off-labeling of Neurontin constituted false claims.” In 2004, Warner-Lambert agreed to plead guilty and paid $430 million in fines-less than fifteen percent of the $3 billion the drug company had grossed in 2004. The cost of fines is built into the product, and is regarded by the industry as “just the cost of doing business.”
Just follow the money trail. You will find that the financial health of pharmaceutical companies has taken precedence over the health of the people they seem to be serving. It seems the medical profession has become an indentured servant to pharmaceutical companies.
Another example of this is one of the most popular medical websites today, WebMD. It boasts over seventy four million visitors a month. Originally owned by Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical giant, it is now publicly owned. But WebMD is primarily funded by the pharmaceutical companies.
One of the most unethical and immoral changes in the industry is the advent of what is called “Direct to Consumer” or DTC advertising. We are so use to this form of TV, radio, and magazine advertising now in the U.S. that it may come as a surprise to learn that only one other country in the world allows it, New Zealand. Visitors to the U.S. are shocked and appalled at the amount of pharmaceutical advertising they see on TV and in electronic and print media. It is absolutely ridiculous.
For years the pharmaceutical industry was allowed to market their products only to doctors-mainly through sales calls, medical journals, continuing medical education classes, mailers, medical conventions, etc. Under pressure from the industry, the FDA finally agreed to allow the first DTC advertising in 1985, but with strict guidelines. Drugs could be called by name, but if they were used to treat specific conditions, the ads were required to list most of the side effects and contraindications.
Due to even more pressure from the industry, in 1997 those guidelines were slackened further so that only the MAJOR side effects and contraindications had to be listed. Therefore between 1994 and 2000 the number of TV ads increased forty-fold! The percentage is even higher today.
The days of us being able to trust our doctors to do their own research and tell us what they think is best for us, are gone. Now, thanks to DTC advertising we are supposed to go to them and demand the drugs we want! The pharmaceutical companies love it! However, thankfully there are many doctors of good conscience who refuse to prescribe a drug just because their patient demands it.
Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies have lobbied for and received from the government a guarantee that they will be shielded from any liability from the use of many of their toxic products. They have already asked for and received a bill that would bar any lawsuit or litigation or liability incurred by them for harm done to children by vaccines, arguing that such suits could run them out of business! They want to bear NO responsibility for any harm, damage or deaths caused by their drugs.
In 2002 a rider called the Eli Lilly Protection Act gave the pharmaceutical companies the assurance they needed to continue to manufacture their injurious drugs with no liability. In the future, watch for Gestapo-like tactics and behind the scenes dirty work to coerce and mandate vaccines for everyone. It is a billion dollar gamble they can’t afford to lose.
All of this has led to the creation of the powerful monster we know today as Big Pharma. Or, should I say, Big P(harm)A? To make matters worse, we have few options on how to change it. Big Pharma, FDA, FTC, CDC, medical schools, and research labs, all enjoy a relationship among themselves designed to protect their plans, their jobs, and their awesome power. Add this to the fact that Big Pharma is the largest contributor to politicians and you can see the grossness of the problem.
One of the few recourses people have at the moment is to sue. Class action suits against a legion of drugs are beginning to appear everywhere. The number of ads on TV by law firms recruiting victims of drug side effects is beginning to rival the number of ads for the drugs themselves! People are getting angry and organized. They realize that the most powerful option they have is to become educated!
Even against terrible odds of ever getting justice families in the United States have continued to file lawsuits after their formerly healthy children became autistic within days of receiving their MMR vaccine. Since the system legally is “rigged” against them, the only recourse for many parents has been to seek compensation from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, a wickedly difficult achievement. Even so, BILLIONS of dollars have been awarded to families of injured or killed children (that were paid for by the U.S. tax payer, not the pharmaceutical companies).
The FDA, which is supposed to protect us from harmful substances in our food and drugs, has not lived up to its responsibilities, and it spends taxpayer dollars to scare people away from alternative medicine. Campaigns of intimidation, threats, and invasions of doctors’ offices by the FDA with guns drawn should NOT be tolerated in a free society.
Natural medicine is now under siege. Big Pharma is desperate to control the “sickness industry.” Its next main goal is to close down and destroy the thorn in its side known as the “wellness industries”, the holistic and alternative clinics, practitioners, and practices around the world, in order to eliminate the competition and consolidate their enormous power.
They are taking steps to achieve this goal EVERY DAY.
Kim Seymour LVN
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Remington, Jane. Recaging the Beast. Aerie LLC, 2012.
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