Bronze-level articleBig Pharma

From RationalWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
m (Reverted edits by Lowmak (talk) to last revision by Weaseloid)
m (new malady)
Line 19: Line 19:
 
In the United States [[democracy]], where corporations now have the legal status of citizens and government exists almost exclusively to promote corporate interests, no such re-examinations have been forthcoming. To the contrary, the latest update to the Medicare program for senior medical care ("Medicare Part D") explicitly ''prevents'' the government from negotiating prices with Big Pharma for the drugs it buys. The taxpayers' largesse toward Big Pharma was spearheaded through the selfless efforts of Senator Chuck Grassley (a Republican from Iowa).<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/washington/18cnd-medicare.html "Bill to Let Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices Is Blocked," New York Times, April 18, 2007]</ref> Of course, it's ''purely a coincidence'' that the medical industry is the leading contributor to Grassley's political fundraising.<ref>[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00001758 Opensecrets.org campaign funding entry for Sen. Chuck Grassley]</ref>
 
In the United States [[democracy]], where corporations now have the legal status of citizens and government exists almost exclusively to promote corporate interests, no such re-examinations have been forthcoming. To the contrary, the latest update to the Medicare program for senior medical care ("Medicare Part D") explicitly ''prevents'' the government from negotiating prices with Big Pharma for the drugs it buys. The taxpayers' largesse toward Big Pharma was spearheaded through the selfless efforts of Senator Chuck Grassley (a Republican from Iowa).<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/washington/18cnd-medicare.html "Bill to Let Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices Is Blocked," New York Times, April 18, 2007]</ref> Of course, it's ''purely a coincidence'' that the medical industry is the leading contributor to Grassley's political fundraising.<ref>[http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00001758 Opensecrets.org campaign funding entry for Sen. Chuck Grassley]</ref>
  
==New maladies==
+
==New malady==
  
Some of the new maladies coined include:
+
One of the new maladies coined include:
  
 
*'''Restless Leg Syndrome''' or '''RLS'''.  Basically, this is caused by too much stress, not enough sleep and the use of stimulants (caffeine mostly), alcohol, H2-histamine blockers, and certain antidepressants.  Back in the day when people only worked one job, RLS wasn't much of a problem.  However, because Americans need to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, RLS is much more common today.  '''Repuip'''<sup>TM</sup><ref>Requip<sup>TM</sup> website [http://www.requip.com/]</ref> is the RLS treatment most often advertised on American TV.
 
*'''Restless Leg Syndrome''' or '''RLS'''.  Basically, this is caused by too much stress, not enough sleep and the use of stimulants (caffeine mostly), alcohol, H2-histamine blockers, and certain antidepressants.  Back in the day when people only worked one job, RLS wasn't much of a problem.  However, because Americans need to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, RLS is much more common today.  '''Repuip'''<sup>TM</sup><ref>Requip<sup>TM</sup> website [http://www.requip.com/]</ref> is the RLS treatment most often advertised on American TV.

Revision as of 14:48, 30 April 2012

Some dare call it

Conspiracy

link=:category:
Secrets revealed!
The revealers
'Tell your doctor...' Tell your Doctor? Shouldn't your doctor tell you what drugs you need? If you tell your doctor, isn't he just a dealer at that point?
—Bill Maher, Victory Begins at Home

Big Pharma is the nickname given to the pharmaceutical industry. The name comes from the acronym used by the industry's lobbying arm -- the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Critics of the industry often use this nickname when discussing abuses by the industry, including:

  • Trying to suck every penny out of the pockets of the sick, injured, dying, and hypochondriacs;[1]
  • Inventing new maladies so people will buy more drugs;[2]
  • Renaming old maladies so people will think their conditions are more serious, making them more willing to pay higher prices for prescriptions. [3]

Woo merchants such as homeopaths stridently blame most or all opposition on Big Pharma. However, as scientifically-literate critics of both Big Pharma and woo (e.g. Ben Goldacre) point out, "Repeat after me: pharma being shit does not mean magic beans cure cancer."[4]

Contents

Advertising of prescription drugs

While many countries allow over-the-counter drugs to be advertised, only the United States and New Zealand allow prescription drugs to be advertised on television. Many critics believe Big Pharma has abused this tolerance by pushing drugs that may not be effective or applicable to their conditions on viewers. Furthermore, Big Pharma has invented new maladies and renamed old maladies in an effort to expand the number of prescriptions written.

Big Pharma often enlists the help of advertising executives to coin new names for maladies. These new names are often three to four words long, allowing for them to form a catchy acronym for the condition.[5] Thanks to televised pushing of prescription drugs, the United States -- which makes up five percent of the world's population -- accounts for forty-two percent of the money spent on prescription drugs.[5] As a result of this abuse, the New Zealand government is reconsidering whether it should continue to allow Big Pharma to advertise prescription drugs on television.

In the United States democracy, where corporations now have the legal status of citizens and government exists almost exclusively to promote corporate interests, no such re-examinations have been forthcoming. To the contrary, the latest update to the Medicare program for senior medical care ("Medicare Part D") explicitly prevents the government from negotiating prices with Big Pharma for the drugs it buys. The taxpayers' largesse toward Big Pharma was spearheaded through the selfless efforts of Senator Chuck Grassley (a Republican from Iowa).[6] Of course, it's purely a coincidence that the medical industry is the leading contributor to Grassley's political fundraising.[7]

New malady

One of the new maladies coined include:

  • Restless Leg Syndrome or RLS. Basically, this is caused by too much stress, not enough sleep and the use of stimulants (caffeine mostly), alcohol, H2-histamine blockers, and certain antidepressants. Back in the day when people only worked one job, RLS wasn't much of a problem. However, because Americans need to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet, RLS is much more common today. RepuipTM[8] is the RLS treatment most often advertised on American TV.

New names for old maladies

Because old diseases don't have the emotional punch that three- and four-letter acronyms have, Big Pharma regularly practices newspeak:

  • Erectile Disfunction or ED: It's bad enough when she says "it happens to every man[9] at some time[10]." It's worse when, a few days later, her family and friends start addressing me you as "The Old Softie."
  • Priapism: Not really a new condition, just one that was unusual before profitable "ED" treatments[11] went on the market. Priapism is the term for that certain side effect where the man has a prolonged[12] erection without being aroused. Thank the advertising firm for CialisTM, which was the first to incorporate the "four hour erection[13]" boast warning in their product's commercials.

Ghostwriting

One of the big problems with Big Pharma is the practice of ghostwriting. This involves pharmaceutical companies paying off doctors to slap their names on some glowing review or commentary which is little more than an advertisement for a product and then attempt to slip it into medical journals. A particularly egregious case of this was when pharmaceuticals hyped menopausal hormone replacement therapy for off-label therapies and downplayed the risk of breast cancer.[14] In one instance, Merck even managed to get an entire bogus journal set up by Elsevier called the Australasian Journal of Joint and Bone Medicine.[15]

Publication bias

Another problem with the influence of pharmaceutical corporations is the possibility of publication bias in research they sponsor. Pharmaceuticals carrying out their own clinical trials must register the trials in a database by law, but they are not required to disclose the results of all of their trials. This enables them to inflate the effectiveness of a drug by sitting on negative trial data.[16]

Conspiracy theories

While the pharmaceutical companies, as shown above, do have a lot to answer for regarding their business practices, some critics of Big Pharma go way, way beyond the realm of well-deserved criticism of these corporations.

The groups that push Big Pharma conspiracies tend to fall into two camps which often overlap: alternative medicine cranks, quacks, and other woo-meisters as well as stock conspiracy theorists. Big Pharma plays the villain in the quack persecution complex as it works tirelessly to suppress their brilliant cures. The general strain of thought behind those who reject evidence-based medicine is that the entirety of medical science (or "Western medicine") is fraudulent and all the studies and experiments are bogus. Any studies showing inefficacy of a treatment are immediately latched onto as "proof" that medical science is bunk by Joseph Mercola and Mike Adams types.[17] Then there are the really cranky cancer conspiracies revolving around the idea that Big Pharma invented the cure for cancer but is covering it up.[18] This is a popular one among raw foodists who believe raw food is "the cure that Big Pharma doesn't want you to know about." Anti-vaxers also live on Big Pharma conspiracy theories. This opens the door for the woo-meisters to peddle their bullshit, because, you see, they actually care about you while Big Pharma has a profit motive and they don't. Nuh-uh, no profit motive for quackery at all. Just pure all-natural goodness like nature intended, naturally, of course.

The conspiracy theorists generally come from the viewpoint of the relationship between Big Pharma and the government. Usually this involves the use of chemtrails or water fluoridation as mind control substances to prepare us to accept the coming New World Order. Either that or they are being used to intentionally keep us sick so Big Pharma can rake in the dough by causing our illnesses and then selling us the cure.

Due to the law of crank magnetism, these two groups often merge into an unholy alliance of crankery. This is how webshites like Natural News, Rense, and that paragon of crankery, Whale.to are born.

So, yes, pharma sucks. But it's not involved in a scheme to depopulate the planet, put mind control chemicals in the water supply via fluoridation, or suppressing cancer cures.

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. It should be noted that the hypochondriacs would gladly pay every sou they have no matter what Big Pharma does. On a second thought, there are alternatives like surgery that they are willing to pay for.
  2. As opposed to inventing better drugs so more people would become addicts.
  3. Paxil Progress Forum: New Year's Resolutions for Big Pharma
  4. http://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/15857117862
  5. 5.0 5.1 CBS News, A Nation of Pill-Takers [1]
  6. "Bill to Let Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices Is Blocked," New York Times, April 18, 2007
  7. Opensecrets.org campaign funding entry for Sen. Chuck Grassley
  8. RequipTM website [2]
  9. Especially since this means she managed to fit "every man" into her schedule...
  10. To make it worse this means some or all of those "every man" are fitted more than once.
  11. AKA "Blue Bombers"
  12. Pun intended
  13. The big secret they are keeping from us is why it's four hours and not three and a half.
  14. Fugh-Berman AJ (2010) The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”. PLoS Med 7(9). See also further commentary by Steven Novella.
  15. Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal, Bio Ethics. See also further commentary by Orac.
  16. Publication Duty for Big Pharma, PloS Medicine
  17. NaturalNews types love these sort of things, like (warning: link contains high levels of bullshit) this one placebo study that apparently proves medical science to be definitively wrong in everything. The other dumb thing about this is, if all these medical studies are bogus and a medical study is done on bogus research, how is this new study any more valid from their point of view?!
  18. Another Cure for Cancer? Steven Novella
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support