Not logged in
Drug companies lie, people die
By Alice Wessendorf on 05/25/2010
Let me set the scene.
It’s 2002. You’re a huge drug company and your cash cow hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs have you living on easy street. The big bucks are rolling in and life is good.
Then disaster strikes. Researchers halt a huge government study on HRT when they found that women taking certain hormones had an increased risk for breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Sales on HRT drugs like Premarin take a massive dip.
What’s a poor suffering drug company to do?
Well, if you’re Big Pharma giant Wyeth-Ayerst the answers easy. You reshuffle the deck in your favor by hiring ghostwriters to snow medical journals with glowing papers backing the use of HRT in women.
Ignoring the obvious dangers to women you scramble to shore up your sinking profits. You have your stable of paid-off writers produce article after article making liberal references to the benefits of HRT and burying the risks. And you keep up this whitewashing for six years.
A recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that the five most prolific writers of pro-HRT journal articles since the federal study was halted were being paid by Wyeth. And, worse…they failed to disclose this clear conflict of interest 95% of the time!
Why bother relying on a TV commercial to convince you of the wonders of their drugs when they can go straight to your doctor’s primary source of information…medical journals? That’s right folks, your doctor will very likely be writing you your next prescription based on a journal article written by a drug company extolling the virtues of its own products.
This goes flying right by manipulation and lands squarely in the land of immorality. It’s one thing to believe that Big Pharma is all about profits over people. It’s quite another to see the proof of it printed in black and white in the prestigious medical journals our doctors rely on most.
I think it’s high time we demand that Big Pharma stay FAR away from our doctor’s prescription pad.
Printer-friendly versionAbout the author
An enthusiastic believer in the power of natural healing, Alice has spent virtually her entire 17-year career in the natural-health publishing field helping to spread the word.
She is an advocate of self-education and is passionate about the power of group knowledge sharing, like the kind found right here on HealthierTalk.com. Alice loves to share her views on holistic and natural healing as well as her, sometimes contentious, thoughts on the profit-driven inner workings of traditional medicine.
Follow Alice and HealthierTalk on Twitter.
Email this Article
Comments
Anonymous
As usual Big-Pharma at its best and with the blessing of our government, I guess they think of us as in a portrait with a big lollypop on top of our heads, on top of that they have most of the Drs as their pushers, even the translators of the BIBLE as English being an unorthodox language put a warning to the readers of the word, there is nothing wrong with the original bible, it is just that some inscription lawyers will use such to lie and cheat the flock, the same goes with prescription lawyers they will lie cheat and adulterate studies for the benefit of few and the end of others, and these educated people with white coats put blinders and do not question, after proof and proof that most or all these medications carry a double edge sword. JAM
Rett
I had two doctors send me certified letters giving me 30 days to find another doctor because I would not do the med they wanted to prescribe. Now tell me the medical profession is not a racket. FDA is suppose to protect the American citizens but instead they are protecting big pharma while big pharma tries to take away our nutritous sources. The world is crazy and getting crazier by the day.
Anonymous
If it were only money I wouldn't mind so much the federal government buying off the drug companies. But lives are at stake. The federal government needs to do its OWN research including all new drug clinical trials. If a non-patentable substance shows better in the trial than a patentable substance, the federal government should give the drug company NOT a patent on the non-patentable substance but a contract to produce a certain amount of it for the federal government to distribute to Medicaid, Medicare, TRI-Care, etc. patients who pay for their drugs with some sort of federal subsidy. Patients who pay out of pocket for drugs (total bill less than deductible or seeking alternative care because they prefer it enough to pay out of pocket for it) should be able to get a free-market version of anything that is not patentable.
Alice Wessendorf
Wow Rett...that is not only sad... it is truly frightening. Are you expected to not participate in the decision making about your own healthcare?
When did healthcare stop being a partnership between doctor and patient? Such a sad state of affairs.
Shirley Gekler
Alice Wessendorf:
I appreciate the articles that you have written, done the research as evidence to help inform the interested people, such as myself.
Big Pharma certainly has the resources to hire the writers to say whatever they want the people to think, actually having their comments in the medical journals which our doctors rely on as being accurate, should not be happening.
This is just a reminder that we need to take personal responsibility for our health and become informed consumers. If we simply follow the path that the pharmaceutical comanies have planned for us, once we get on a drug, we very likely will be taking it for the rest of our lives, after all we are told by our doctors that they will help us manage our disease, once we have had various diagnosis, such as diabetes.
There is never a mention of a supplementation program which could ultimately CURE the disease.
I am very happy that I have a doctor who supports my being proactive as far as supplementation goes.
Post new comment