Tag Archives: Big Pharma

Japan Leads the Way: No Vaccine Mandates and No MMR Vaccine = Healthier Children, by Kristina Kristen

Posted on April 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

If innoculations are supposedly essential to promote childhood health, why does the country which immunizes the most have such lousy childhood health statistics? From Kristina Kristen at childrenshealthdefense.org:

The Promise of Good Health; Are We Jumping Off the Cliff in the U.S.?

In the United States, many legislators and public health officials are busy trying to make vaccines de facto compulsory—either by removing parental/personal choice given by existing vaccine exemptions or by imposing undue quarantines and fines on those who do not comply with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) vaccine edicts. Officials in California are seeking to override medical opinion about fitness for vaccination, while those in New York are mandating the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine for 6-12-month-old infants for whom its safety and effectiveness “have not been established.”

The U.S. has the very highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized countries, with more American children dying at birth and in their first year than in any other comparable nation—and more than half of those who survive develop at least one chronic illness.

American children would be better served if these officials—before imposing questionable and draconian measures—studied child health outcomes in Japan. With a population of 127 million, Japan has the healthiest children and the very highest “healthy life expectancy” in the world—and the least vaccinated children of any developed country. The U.S., in contrast, has the developed world’s most aggressive vaccination schedule in number and timing, starting at pregnancy, at birth and in the first two years of life. Does this make U.S. children healthier? The clear answer is no. The U.S. has the very highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized countries, with more American children dying at birth and in their first year than in any other comparable nation—and more than half of those who survive develop at least one chronic illness. Analysis of real-world infant mortality and health results shows that U.S. vaccine policy does not add up to a win for American children.

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WHO, Pharma, Gates and Government: Who’s Calling the Shots? by Barbara Loe Fisher

Posted on February 8, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Vaccine hesitancy” is a pejorative, like “climate change denier,” thrown at people who question the official story. From Barbara Loe Fisher at lewrockwell.com:

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a report on January 16, 2019 ranking “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the top “10 Threats to Global Health in 2019,” alongside air pollution and climate change, noncommunicable diseases, global influenza pandemic, antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases such as ebola, dengue fever and HIV.1

Throughout history, the greatest contributors to disease and early death in human populations have been poverty, poor sanitation and poor nutrition,2,3,4 but infectious diseases with pharmaceutical solutions dominated this list.

And, there was no mention of the major opioid addiction crisis crippling and killing tens of thousands of people in the U.S. and Europe,5,6 or the iatrogenic medical error epidemic that every year claims more than 750,000 lives in Europe7 and 250,000 lives in the U.S., where it is the third leading cause of death.8

The immediate mainstream media response to the WHO’s announcement was to focus on “vaccine hesitancy,” with The Editorial Board of The New York Times declaring January 19 that “anti-vaxxers” are “the enemy” and calling on the U.S. government to “get tough” by waging a “bold and aggressive” pro-vaccine campaign that includes “tightening restrictions around how much leeway states can grant families that want to skip essential vaccines.”9

By January 23, The Hill announced Washington state had declared a state of emergency because of 23 cases of measles reported in an “anti-vaccination community” near Portland, Oregon,10 and there was a public call in the U.K. for social media platforms to “clamp down on fake news” and censor “misleading information and negative messaging around vaccination.”11,12

The New York Times’ editorial headline, “How to Inoculate Against Anti-Vaxxers,” was a theme repeated in articles reacting to the WHO’s suggestion that people wanting to make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination are a global menace. One doctor suggested that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are selfish: “[I]t’s a matter of ‘I don’t care about other people in the community, I only care about the health and welfare of my own child.’”13

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Big Pharma and the Rise of Gangster Capitalism, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on July 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

Big pharma has a sweet deal. Barriers to entry are prohibitively high, and the oligopoly is protected, and often reimbursed, by the government. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

$8 per vial in competing developed-world nations and $38,892 in the U.S. That says it all.
Thanks to decades of gangster films, we all know how gangster capitalism works: the cost of “protection” goes up whenever the gangster wants to increase revenues, any competition is snuffed out, and “customer demand” is jacked up by any means available– addiction, for example.
This perfectly describes the pharmaceutical industry and every other cartel in America. You might have read about the price increase in Acthar gel, a medication to treat Infantile Spasms. (via J.F., M.D., who alerted me to the repricing of this medication from $40 in 2001 to the current price of $38,892.)
The compound first received approval in 1950, and various branded versions have been approved in recent years. Let’s be clear: this medication did not require billions of dollars in research and development, or decades of testing to obtain FDA approval; it’s been approved for use for the past 68 years.
Yes, you read that correctly: a medication that’s been in use for 68 years went from $40 a dose in 2001 to $38,892 today. Don’t you love the pricing? Not a round 38 grand, but $38,892. You gotta love these gangsters!
There’s another related term to describe this form of capitalism: racketeering.That’s what mobsters do–operate rackets.
The Big Pharma racket enriches a number of gangs practicing gangster capitalism: the drug companies themselves, of course, but some doctors are profiting from the racket, and so are pharmaceutical lobbyists:
Study highlights role of doctor conflicts of interest in Medicare spending on Mallinckrodt drug Acthar Study published in JAMA indicates nearly 90 percent of doctors prescribing HP Acthar Gel took payments from drug’s manufacturer.
Here are the money quotes:
In 2014 Mallinckrodt raised the price of Acthar further to $34,000. The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from five states sued Mallinckrodt for anti-competitive behavior with regard to the acquisition of Synacthen Depot and the monopolistic pricing of Acthar, and in January 2017 the company settled, agreeing to pay $100 million and to license Synacthen Depot to a competitor. 
According to Kaiser Health News, Mallinckrodt responded by increasing its Congressional lobbying to $610,000, and its contributions to Congress members to $44,000, in the first quarter of 2017.
As an off-patent pharmaceutical, a similar drug, differing in formulation, available in Europe, made by a different manufacturer, sells for $8 per vial.
So a medication to treat infants costs $8 per vial in Europe and $38,892 in the U.S. Don’t you just love gangster capitalism to death? Because death and suffering is the gangsters’ ultimate threat: pay up or die.

 

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How Pharma Sabotaged the Drug Enforcement Agency and Caused Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths, by Joseph Mercola

Posted on November 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

The pharmaceutical industry and drug distributors stand accused of amplifying the opioid crisis. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at lewrockwell.com:

Opioid-related statistics reveal the U.S. has an enormous problem on its hands. Americans use 80 percent of all the opioids sold worldwide.1 In Alabama, which has the highest opioid prescription rate in the U.S., 143 prescriptions are written for every 100 people.2 A result of this over-prescription trend is skyrocketing deaths from overdoses.3,4

As recently reported by CNN, the Manchester, New Hampshire, fire department responds to more calls for drug overdoses than fires these days.5 In 2015, 52,404 Americans died from drug overdoses; 33,091 of them involved an opioid and nearly one-third of them, 15,281, were by prescription.6,7,8

The following graph by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows the progressive incline in overdose deaths related to opioid pain relievers between 2002 and 2015.9 This does not include deaths from heroin addiction, which we now know is a common side effect of getting hooked on these powerful prescription narcotics. In all, we’re looking at just over 202,600 deaths in this 13-year time frame alone.10

National Overdose Deaths

Meanwhile, kidney disease, listed as the ninth leading cause of death on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) top 10 list, killed 48,146.11 The CDC does not include drug overdoses on this list, but if you did, drug overdoses (63 percent of which are opioids), would replace kidney disease as the ninth leading cause of death as of 2015. As if that wasn’t bad enough, recent statistics reveal that in Americans under the age of 50, opioids are now the LEADING cause of death.

In a sadly ironic twist, research reveals many other nations struggle with a dire lack of pain relief for end-stage, terminal patients. As reported by The Atlantic:12  “Some 45 percent of the 56.2 million people who died in 2015 experienced serious suffering, the authors found. That included 2.5 million children. More than 80 percent of the people were from developing regions, and the vast majority had no access to palliative care and pain relief.”

To continue reading: How Pharma Sabotaged the Drug Enforcement Agency and Caused Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths

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Fraud, Exploitation and Collusion: America’s Pharmaceutical Industry, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on October 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

America’s pharmaceutical industry is a racket, and it’s bought and paid for any number of politicians and bureaucrats. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

The rot within manifested by the pharmaceutical industry almost defies description.
The theme this week is The Rot Within.
America’s Pharmaceutical industry takes pride of place in this week’s theme of The Rot Within, as the industry has raised fraud, exploitation and collusion to systemic perfection.
What other industry can routinely kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and suffer no blowback? Only recently has the toll of needless deaths from the opioid pandemic finally roused a comatose corporate media and bought-and-paid-for, see-no-evil Congress to wonder if maybe there should be some limits placed on Big Pharma and its drug distributors.
What other industry can raise prices any time it wants because, well, it can?Longtime correspondent/physician J.F. recently submitted a chart of medication price increases (below)–nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual because we can price increases.
What other industry has such complete control over the federal government?Dr. J.F. reminded me that the law enacting Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage specifically prohibits the U.S. government from negotiating lower prices on the immense volume of medications it purchases through Medicare (not to mention the Medicaid and Veterans Administration programs).
J.F. also submitted this investigative report from CNN, The little red pill being pushed on the elderly.
Here’s the money-shot:
“The combination of two generic drugs that makes up Nuedexta — a cough suppressant and heart medication — was once available from specialty pharmacists willing to combine the ingredients for less than $1 a pill, according to a US Senate report on rising prescription drug prices. Now the FDA-approved medication costs as much as $12.60 a pill.”
If this isn’t fraud, exploitation and collusion, then what is it? Please don’t say “good old free-market capitalism,” because competition is nowhere in sight.

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“Worse Than Big Tobacco”: How Big Pharma Fuels the Opioid Epidemic, by Lynn Parramore

Posted on October 13, 2017 | Leave a comment

Opioids are a beautiful business…for the pharmaceutical companies. Many are protected by a patent monopoly, and like cigarettes and alcohol, the customers often get addicted. From Lynn Parramore at ineteconomics.com:

Once again, an out-of-control industry is threatening public health on a mammoth scale

Over a 40-year career, Philadelphia attorney Daniel Berger has obtained millions in settlements for investors and consumers hurt by a rogues’ gallery of corporate wrongdoers, from Exxon to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. But when it comes to what America’s prescription drug makers have done to drive one of the ghastliest addiction crises in the country’s history, he confesses amazement.

“I used to think that there was nothing more reprehensible than what the tobacco industry did in suppressing what it knew about the adverse effects of an addictive and dangerous product,” says Berger. “But I was wrong. The drug makers are worse than Big Tobacco.”

The U.S. prescription drug industry has opened a new frontier in public havoc, manipulating markets and deceptively marketing opioid drugs that are known to addict and even kill. It’s a national emergency that claims 90 lives per day. Berger lays much of the blame at the feet of companies that have played every dirty trick imaginable to convince doctors to overprescribe medication that can transform fresh-faced teens and mild-mannered adults into zombified junkies.

So how have they gotten away with it?

A Market for Lies

The prescription drug industry is a strange beast, born of perverse thinking about markets and economics, explains Berger. In a normal market, you shop around to find the best price and quality on something you want or need—a toaster, a new car. Businesses then compete to supply what you’re looking for. You’ve got choices: If the price is too high, you refuse to buy, or you wait until the market offers something better. It’s the supposed beauty of supply and demand.

To continue reading: “Worse Than Big Tobacco”: How Big Pharma Fuels the Opioid Epidemic

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