Case study/Case analysis

Big Pharma and the Mafia

 

It’s not a good time to be a drug company employee. Increasingly, those at the top of Establishment medicine are joining the ranks of whistleblowers like us calling for medicine to be decoupled from the pharmaceutical industry.

 

It’s not a good time to be a drug company employee. Increasingly, those at the top of Establishment medicine are joining the ranks of whistleblowers like us calling for medicine to be decoupled from the pharmaceutical industry.

One of the biggest canaries at the moment is Peter Gøtzsche, none other than the head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, the Scandanavian arm of the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent research and information centre committed to preparing, maintaining, and disseminating reviews of the various treatments of mainstream medicine and examining whether they have adequate evidence of safety and effectiveness.  Cochrane was the first group of individuals to champion the notion of‘evidence-based’ medicine – that is, medicine shouldn’t be used unless there’s evidence that the stuff works.

Gøtzsche is a guy after my own heart. When asked to speak at a Danish Society for Rheumatology event, called ‘Collaboration with the drug industry.  Is it THAT harmful?’ Peter’s opening gambit was to highlight the fact that Pfizer, one of the meeting’s sponsors, had been fined $2.3 billion in the US for promoting off-label use of four drugs, while Merck, the sponsor the year before, had been responsible for the deaths of thousands due to deceptive information about its arthritis drug.

Gøtzsche’s  latest book, entitled Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare’ (Radcliffe Publishing Ltd) pulls even fewer punches. The book essentially makes the point that the drugs industry uses virtually every tactic used by the mob to sell its products.

He even quotes a former vice-president of Pfizer as saying, ‘It is scary how many similarities there are between his industry and the mob.  The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry.  The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the sides effects are the same in this industry.  The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry.’

Perhaps even more extraordinary than the careful case made by this blunt soothsayer is the fact that Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal, agreed to write the book’s foreword. In the book, Smith points out, the characteristics of organized crime include extortion, fraud, federal drug offences, bribery, embezzlement, obstruction of justice obstruction of law enforcement, tampering with witnesses and political corruption. 

“Peter produces evidence, most of it detailed, to support his case that pharmaceutical companies are guilty of most of these offenses,” says Smith. Indeed, most of the billions paid out as fines by the drugs industry for flouting the law as thought of as ‘the cost of doing business.’

“As an epidemiologist with very high numerical literacy and a passion for details, so that he is a world leader in critiquing clinical studies, Peter is here on very solid ground,” says Smith. “He shows too how the industry has bought doctors, academics, journals, professional and patient organizations, university departments, journalists, regulators and politicians. These are the methods of the mob.”

This is only the latest canary from among Establishment medicine to blow the whistle on Big Pharma. Marcia Ancell, the editor for two decades at the new England Journal of Medicine, recently published her own book:  The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.

All of the major medical journals, from the BMJ and the Lancet, to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New Eng Journal, have revealed the scale of the problem – that correctly prescribed drugs are the fourth leading cause of death, that drug companies massage and make up data.

Medicine should be a gift to us all rather than a money-making scheme for the pharmaceutical industry, as it now largely is.

With that in mind, we suggest that the following be implemented.

I. An independent funding body should be created to finance all medical trials, whether of drugs, other forms of therapy or alternatives

II. Doctors should be required to spend one year of their five-year training learning about nutrition, alternative modalities and new possibilities

III. Drug-company influence should be entirely excluded from medicine, from training colleges and from trips abroad

IV. Doctors should be rewarded for adopting non-drug therapies, thus saving the nation at least one small part of the £160 billion spent every year on drugs by the NHS.

But most of all, we need to open up the entire field of cancer—our understanding of what it is, what causes it and how it could be treated—while taking on board new understandings of the body and the impact upon it of the environment, stress and emotions. As a researcher once commented when asked whether research into alternative healing should continue, “We can’t find the answers if we don’t keep asking the questions.”

We will shortly announce our campaign for freeing medicine from the pharmaceutical industry, so that doc tors and patients alike are free to use an entire toolkit of modalities to get and stay well.

Irrefutable proof that Big Pharma is a criminal racket: Bribery, scientific fraud, felony crimes and more

Sunday, July 20, 2014 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Tags:  Big Pharma ,  criminal racket ,  irrefutable proof

(NaturalNews) Those of us who have long been describing the pharmaceutical industry as a "criminal racket" over the last few years have been wholly vindicated by recent news. Drug and vaccine manufacturer Merck was caught red-handed by two of its own scientists faking vaccine efficacy data by spiking blood samples with animal antibodies. GlaxoSmithKline has just been fined a whopping $3 billion for bribing doctors, lying to the FDA, hiding clinical trial data and fraudulent marketing. Pfizer, meanwhile has been sued by the nation's pharmacy retailers for what is alleged as an "overarching anticompetitive scheme" to keep generic cholesterol drugs off the market and thereby boost its own profits. The picture that's emerging is one of a criminal drug industry that has turned to mafia tactics in the absence of any real science that would prove their products to be safe or effective. The emergence of this extraordinary evidence of bribery, scientific fraud, lying to regulators and monopolistic practices that harm consumers is also making all those doctors and "skeptics" who defended Big Pharma and vaccines eat their words. To defend Big Pharma today is to defend a cabal of criminal corporations that have proven they will do anything -- absolutely anything -- to keep their profits rolling in. It makes no difference who they have to bribe, what studies they have to falsify, or who has to be threatened into silence. They will stop at nothing to expand their profit base, even if it means harming (or killing) countless innocents. Let's take a look at recent revelations:

GlaxoSmithKline pleads guilty to bribery, fraud and other crimes

In what is now the largest criminal fraud settlement ever to come out of the pharmaceutical industry, GlaxoSmithKline has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1 billion in criminal fines and $2 billion in civil fines following a nine-year federal investigation into its activities. According to U.S. federal investigators, GlaxoSmithKline (http://www.naturalnews.com/036416_GlaxoSmith...): • Routinely bribed doctors with luxury vacations and paid speaking gigs • Fabricated drug safety data and lied to the FDA • Defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of billions • Deceived regulators about the effectiveness of its drugs • Relied on its deceptive practices to earn billions of dollars selling potentially dangerous drugs to unsuspecting consumers and medical patients And this is just the part they got caught doing. GSK doesn't even deny any of this. The company simply paid the $3 billion fine, apologized to its customers, and continued conducting business as usual. By the way, in addition to bribing physicians, GSK has plenty of money to spread around bribing celebrities and others who pimps its products. The company reportedly paid $275,000 to the celebrity doctor known as "Dr. Drew," who promoted Glaxo's mind-altering antidepressant drug Wellbutrin (http://naturalsociety.com/top-radio-doctor-p...). As the Wall Street Journal reports: In June 1999, popular radio personality Dr. Drew Pinsky used the airwaves to extol the virtues of GlaxoSmithKline PLC's antidepressant Wellbutrin, telling listeners he prescribes it and other medications to depressed patients because it "may enhance or at least not suppress sexual arousal" as much as other antidepressants do. But one thing listeners didn't know was that, two months before the program aired, Dr. Pinsky -- who gained fame as "Dr. Drew" during years co-hosting a popular radio sex-advice show "Loveline" -- received the second of two payments from Glaxo totaling $275,000 for "services for Wellbutrin." (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527...)

Merck falsified vaccine data, spiked blood samples and more, say former employees

According to former Merck virologists Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, the company: (http://www.naturalnews.com/036328_Merck_mump...) • "Falsified test data to fabricate a vaccine efficacy rate of 95 percent or higher." • Spiked the blood test with animal antibodies in order to artificially inflate the appearance of immune system antibodies. • Pressured the two virologists to "participate in the fraud and subsequent cover-up." • Used the falsified trial results to swindle the U.S. government out of "hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization." • Intimidated the scientists, threatening them with going to jail unless they stayed silent. This is all documented in a 2010 False Claims Act which NaturalNews has acquired and posted here: http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents...

Millions of children put at risk by Merck

In that document the two virologists say they, "witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine's efficacy findings." They also claim that because of the faked vaccine results, "the United States has over the last decade paid Merck hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization... The United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck's fraud." They go on to point out that children are the real victims, however: "But the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection. ...The failure in Merck's vaccine has allowed this disease to linger with significant outbreaks continuing to occur."

Merck's mumps viral strain is 45 years old

According to the complaint, Merck has been using the same mumps strain -- weakened from generations of being "passaged" -- for the last 45 years! The complaint reads: "For more than thirty years, Merck has had an exclusive license from the FDA to manufacture and sell a mumps vaccine in the U.S. The FDA first approved the vaccine in 1967. It was developed by Dr. Maurice Hilleman, at Merck's West Point research facility, from the mumps virus that infected his five year-old daughter Jeryl Lynn. Merck continues to use this 'Jeryl Lynn' strain of the virus for its vaccine today."

A complete medical farce

This information appears to show Merck's mumps vaccine to be a complete medical farce. Those who blindly backed Merck's vaccines -- the science bloggers, "skeptics," doctors, CDC and even the FDA -- have been shown to be utter fools who have now destroyed their reputations by siding with an industry now known to be dominated by scientific fraud and unbounded criminality. That's the really hilarious part in all this: After decades of doctors, scientists and government authorities blindly and brainlessly repeating the mantra of "95% effectiveness," it all turns out to be total quackery hogwash. Utterly fabricated. Quackety-quack quack. And all those hundreds of millions of Americans who lined up to be injected with MMR vaccines were all repeatedly and utterly conned into potentially harming themselves while receiving no medical benefit. Intelligent, informed Natural News readers, home school parents, and "awakened" people who said "No!" to vaccines are now emerging as the victors in all this. By refusing to be injected with Merck's vaccines, they avoided being assaulted with a fraudulent cocktail of adjuvant chemicals and all-but-useless mumps strains over four decades old. They protected their time, money and health. Those who refuse to be physically violated by vaccines are, once again, turning out to be the smartest people in society. No wonder they also tend to be healthier than the clueless fools who line up to get vaccinated every year.

Merck fraudulently misrepresented the efficacy of its vaccine and contributed to the spread of infectious disease, says lawsuit

The faked vaccine efficacy numbers aren't the only troubles Merck is now facing. Shortly after the above False Claims Act was made public, Chatom Primary Care filed suit against Merck. That document is available from NaturalNews at: http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents... It alleges that: • [Merck engaged in] ...a decade-long scheme to falsify and misrepresent the true efficacy of its vaccine. • Merck fraudulently represented and continues to falsely represent in its labeling and elsewhere that its Mumps Vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent of higher. • Merck knows and has taken affirmative steps to conceal -- by using improper testing techniques and falsifying test data -- that its Mumps Vaccine is, and has been since at least 1999, far less than 95 percent effective. • Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck's desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study's findings. • Merck also engaged in "incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results... destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator... threatened a virologist in Merck's vaccine division with jail if he reported the fraud to the FDA." • "Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck's desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study's findings. [Then] Merck designed even more scientifically flawed methodology, this time incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results, but it too failed to achieve Merck's fabricated efficacy rate. Confronted with two failed methodologies, Merck then falsified the test data to guarantee the results it desired. Having achieved the desired, albeit falsified, efficacy threshold, Merck submitted these fraudulent results to the FDA and European Medicines Agency." • "Merck took steps to cover up the tracks of its fraudulent testing by destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator... Merck also attempted to buy the silence and cooperation of its staff by offering them financial incentives to follow the direction of Merck personnel overseeing the fraudulent testing process. Merck also threatened... Stephen Krahling, a virologist in Merck's vaccine division from 1999 to 2001, with jail if he reported fraud to the FDA." • "Merck continued to conceal what it knew about the diminished efficacy of its Mumps Vaccine even after significant mumps outbreaks in 2006 and 2009."

Obama administration has zero interest in actual justice

Another interesting note in all this is that under President Obama, the U.S. Dept. of Justice showed no interest whatsoever in investigating Merck over the False Claims Act filed by two of its former virologists. Despite the convincing evidence of fraud described in detail by insider whistleblowers, the Obama Department of Justice, led by gun-running Attorney General Eric Holder who is already facing serious questions over Operation Fast and Furious, simply chose to ignore the False Claims Act complaint. When evidence of criminal fraud was brought before the U.S. Department of Justice, in other words, the DoJ looked the other way with a wink and a nod to the medical crimes taking place right under their noses. Who cares if tens of millions of children are being injected year after year with a fraudulent mumps vaccine? There's money to be made, after all, and exploiting the bodies of little children for profit is just business as usual in a fascist nation dominated by corporate interests.

Pfizer sued by retailers over anticompetitive scheme

Adding to all this, Pfizer has now been sued by five U.S. retailers (pharmacies) who accuse the company of monopolistic market practices. According to the lawsuit, Pfizer conspired to prevent generic versions of its blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor from entering the market. This was done to protect billions in profits while making sure patients did not have access to more affordable cholesterol drugs. Pfizer sells nearly $10 billion worth of Lipitor each year. According to the Reuters report on this lawsuit, Pfizer is being accused of (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/05/us...): • Obtaining a fraudulent patent • Engaging in sham litigation • Entering a price-fixing agreement to delay cheaper generics • Entering arrangements with pharmacy benefit managers to force retailers to buy more Lipitor (chemical name is atorvastatin calcium)

No arrests or prosecution of Big Pharma executives

One of the most astonishing realizations in all this is that given all the criminal fraud, bribery, misrepresentation, lying to the FDA, price fixing and other crimes that are going on in the pharmaceutical industry, you'd think somebody somewhere might be arrested and charged with a crime, right? Nope. To date, not a single pharmaceutical CEO, marketing employee or drug rep has been charged with anything related to all this fraud. In America, drug company employees are "above the law" just like top mafia bosses of a bygone era. How insane is this, exactly? Consider this: Imagine if YOU, an individual, went around town bribing doctors, falsifying data, selling a fraudulent product to the government, lying to regulators, engaging in anti-trade price-fixing and threatening your employees into silence. What would happen to you? You'd probably wind up rotting in prison, the subject of an FBI investigation and a DoJ prosecution. So why is it okay for a multi-billion-dollar corporation to carry out these same crimes and get away with it? Why are the CEOs of top drug companies given a free pass to commit felony crimes and endless fraud? I'll tell you why, and you're not gonna like the answer: Because America has become a nation run by crooks for the benefit of crooks. It's one big country club, and as comedian George Carlin used to say, "YOU ain't in it!"

If Big Pharma would falsify data on vaccines, what else would the industry do?

I hope you're getting the bigger picture in all this, friends. If these drug companies routinely bribe doctors, falsify data, defraud the government and commit felony crimes without remorse, what else would they be willing to do for profit? Would they: • Falsify efficacy data on other prescription drugs? • Exploit children for deadly vaccine trials? • Invent fictitious diseases to sell more drugs? • Unleash bioweapons to cause a profitable pandemic? • Conspire with the CDC to spread fear to promote vaccinations? • Silence whistleblowers who try to go public with the truth? • Give people cancer via stealth viruses in vaccines? • Destroy the careers of medical scientists who question Big Pharma? • Force a medical monopoly on the entire U.S. population via socialist health care legislation? But of course they would. In fact, the industry is doing all those things right now. And if you don't believe me, just remember that five years ago, no one believed me when I said drug companies were engaged in criminal conspiracies to defraud the nation -- something that has now been proven over a nine-year investigation.

Why ‘Big Pharma’ gets a bad rap for doing what everyone else does: Common business practice

The Pharmaceutical industry often gets bad publicity for developing medicine solely to achieve the highest profits. While this may sound unacceptable, it’s common business practice seen in a variety of other industries. This might seem unfair, especially because their business model is based on the same principles: Balancing risk and safety using a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate if that investment for a new drug for cancer is safe and sound. These analyses should be sound as well, because people’s lives are at stake.

In pharmaceutical companies, risks and safety resonate throughout the companies’ layers. At the top, people are concerned with safe investments, in the lab risks are avoided as much as possible to work safely. But these principles are most clearly visible on the product level: The newly developed drug should be tested thoroughly to assess its effectiveness, but also if the drug would cause a risk itself (i.e. side-effects) and most importantly, if these risks are lower than the benefits. (i.e. successful treatment)

Cisplatin used to be a very popular medicine in cancer treatment. It effectively stops (tumor) cells from dividing, which would potentially result in the cancer being cured. It targets the cells that duplicate the fastest, usually tumor cells, but also others, (hair cells and mucosal cells in the digestive system) which causes its known side-effects: Hair loss and digestive problems. When Cisplatin was developed people deemed the cost of getting these side-effects was less than the benefit of treating the cancer successfully. 

Cancer-treatment is known for its side-effects, because the hypothetical cost of dying rises above the cost for treatment. When this gap gets smaller, we get more critical. We wouldn’t want to lose our hair every time we pop in a painkiller to treat our headache. Or feel extremely dizzy or sleepy when taking allergy medicine. We urge pharmaceutical companies to look for safer alternatives, or we simply won’t take the medicine, or competitors could quickly develop a safer drug for our disease.

This is exactly why cisplatin USED to be popular. It’s when alternatives with less side-effects came to the market we started to reject the use of cisplatin. Newer treatments include antibody-treatments like

Herceptin, against breast-cancer are more specific, targeting just the tumor cells effectively, causing less side-effects. But switching to these alternatives comes with a cost: A monetary one. More specific treatments will work on a smaller group of people, meaning the research costs will be divided over a smaller group, making the drug more expensive.

This illustrates the problem ‘Big Pharma’ has: With all the money in the world, it probably wouldn’t take long before cancer could be treated with a safe drug with few or no side-effects. But to regain the investment into developing such a drug, its price would be enormous. And then we turn to the Risk-Benefit Analysis of the doctor and patient: Opt for the perfect but super expensive drug, or receive a far cheaper treatment while enduring some nasty side-effects.  Pharmaceutical companies have realised switching to cheaper alternatives is more preferable, and therefore they deem their chances of returning their investment too low for the benefits it could reap. Their costs would be too high for their hypothetical benefits, which could mean saving lives. Essentially, the pharmaceutical industry chooses to preserve itself, and maintaining profit, instead of doing everything it can to aid the ‘customer’. And while it may not be ethical, it’s common business practice.