Blowing the Whistle on Big Pharma

This is an awesome video! An ex-pharmaceutical drug rep tells you the truth about the intentions of big pharma:

Top Ten Violence Inducing Drugs

A survey of the FDA adverse reactions database has produced a list of the top ten prescription drugs linked to violent behavior. You can see the list here: Study reveals top ten violence-inducing prescription drugs.

Not surprisingly the majority of the top ten are anti-depressants and all but one of the rest are psychiatric or psychiatric type drugs.

So next time you see an ad for the latest wonder drug that will save you from some terrible mental problem (addiction to cigarettes, depression, ADHD, etc.) realize that it's an ad. It's not reality. The reality is the FDA adverse reactions database.

Big Pharma is lower key, but still in control at Psychiatric Convention

As reported in the article, No Free Pens But Pharma Influence Still Felt at Psychiatric Meeting, Big Pharma is trying to be less noticeable, but is still in control of the psychiatric industry.

Are Flu Vaccines useless?

Interesting article examining the science behind flu vaccines: Does the Vaccine Matter?

As is the case with so many drugs, the science is just not there to back up the claims.

Incredible new antidepressant (satire)

Pharmaceutical maker, LillyGlaxoWyeth, has just announced the launch of their latest product, Placebozac.

Placebozac (also known my its chemical name "placebo") is an antidepressant that was proven in a recent study to be just as effective as fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone). You can read the results of the study by the University of Hull here: "Prozac Doesn't Work"

"The great advantage with Placebozac over the traditional antidepressants," said spokesperson Ima Fake, "is that it doesn't have the usual minor side-effects of psychiatric drugs such as suicide, violent behavior, depression, anxiety, bizarre dreams, emotional numbing, delusions, hallucinations, headaches, heart attacks, hostility, impotence, psychotic episode, paranoia, seizures, sexual dysfunction, homicidal ideation and all the rest. There is even a possibility that if people switch to Placebozac the number of school shootings may decrease. Although, as a member of the pharmaceutical industry, I will say right here and now that antidepressants have nothing whatsoever to do with school, postal or any other kind of shootings, however, our marketing department insisted I mention it."

The new drug will be available soon at only $200 for a bottle of 40, 10mg tablets. In the mean time you can get a sample at a reduced introductory price from your local candy store - just ask for "sugar pills".

Addictive Prescription Drugs

I just found out about a radio show that addresses the widespread, but little known problem of prescription drug addiction. The show is called Prescription Addiction Radio and you can hear the shows on the Listen to Past Shows page.

I listened on Sunday (Heroin-Cocaine-Morphine -Nothing New as Silence Continues.... Youth visit the Studio - Comments from Generation Rx) and was impressed.

The host has good data and his guests were three young adults who know about this problem. One guest works at a clinic that helps people get off prescription drugs and he related some horrors of prescription drug addiction.

It's amazing how uninformed doctors will give out dangerous, addictive drugs as if they were candy. One caller to the show had been on Methadone for six years. Six years of prescription drugs that resulted in addiction that he is still trying to get over. The amazing thing is that if you look up Methadone on the Internet you will find people extolling its virtues! It's sad to see what great PR huge amounts of money from drug companies can buy.

Anyway, I recommend you listen to the show. If you aren't in an area where it is broadcast you can listen to it on the net.

History Repeating Itself - The Medical Industry Makes a Profit while People Die

I just read this fascinating piece that covers the history of the relationship between the American Medical Association and Big Tobacco: Doctors, American Medical Association hawked cigarettes as healthy for consumers. You may not believe this but for 30 years the medical establishment defended Big Tobacco and for another 30 various medical "experts" continued to pretend that cigarettes didn't damage your health.

It is frightening to realize that for decades "experts" and "authorities" on health promoted something that kills people slowly and painfully. The first study linking cigarettes to cancer came out in 1930 and it wasn't until 1964 that the Surgeon General published a report on the dangers of cigarettes, that's 34 years. Following this Big Tobacco continued to pay doctors to defend them and it wasn't until the late 1990's that court cases and whistleblowers finally made it impossible for anyone to claim that cigarettes were not linked to all sorts of diseases.

It is a sad commentary on the educational system that this sort of criminality can be repeated and the majority of the population has no clue. From 1930 to the late 1990's it was Big Tobacco that was pouring millions into the PR machine and into the pockets of doctors to hide the truth about the dangers of cigarettes. Now we have Big Pharma doing exactly the same thing to hide the fact that their hugely profitable drugs are killing and damaging people.

How many more decades and how many more deaths before the truth is finally acknowledged and the criminals are brought to justice?

Pharmaceutical Reps Manipulating Doctors

So you think doctors make informed decisions about the drugs they prescribe? Think again:

Read more about Gwen Olsen and her book Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher

Education doubling as Advertising

When drug companies take over the education of doctors is it any wonder that doctors prescribe drugs without knowing the side-effects? When GlaxoSmithKline writes the course then it promotes its own diabetes drug Avandia (which has been found to cause heart disease) and hardly mentions a safer drug from a competitor.

In an article in the New York Times, a professor at Tufts Medical School exposes "Education that doubles as advertising for drug companies": Diagnosis: Conflict of Interest. It's an eye-opening read.

Here's something to make the FDA and Drug Companies Think Twice

In the US, if a drug, approved by the FDA, is later found to kill people or have horrendous side-effects (such as thalydamide, fen-phen, vioxx, paxil, etc.) then it is withdrawn and maybe the drug company has a law suit in which they have to pay out a few millions, which is nothing compared to the billions they make from such drugs. But that's usually the end of it and life and profit making goes on: FDA staffers and directors later get lucrative jobs with major pharmaceutical corporations or affiliated entities (such as PR firms) and the drug companies continue making billions by selling dangerous drugs to an unsuspecting public.

Things in China are a little different: China's ex-food and drug chief sentenced to death. He took bribes and approved drugs that killed people. Is that so very different from our own FDA? They approve drugs that kill people and one could view lucrative jobs in drug companies or related entities to be a form of bribery. I'm not a particularly blood thirsty person and I don't agree with the death penalty, but perhaps we should take notice of what happened in China and get a bit tougher on the people responsible for approving harmful drugs.