Big Oil, Big Military Contractors, Big Pharma -- which is worse?

The answer, of course, is that they are all, in Bush-speak, evil.

But which is worse, at any point in time, depends on our point of view and their immediate and long term effects on us.

Big Pharma effects many of us daily. They strongly influence, or even outright control, what our physicians prescribe. Perhaps many, hopefully most, of our physicians still see that their main responsibilities should lie with the patient, but more and more the big pockets of Big Pharma is subverting our health care (just as those same big pockets subvert our Congress).

This article (How Big Pharma Learned To Seduce You by Alicia Rebensdorf) reviews the lack of any substantive change in proposed legislation:

At first glance, drug company influence on the recent legislation can be hard to see. The bill raises fees on pharmaceutical patents to beef up FDA staff and speed review. It also gives the FDA power to fine companies for ads that fail to list risks in a "clear and conspicuous neutral manner."

However, compared to the recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine back in September, this bill replaces a steak knife with a spoon. The Senate bill ignores their suggested two-year moratorium on advertising new medication. It fails to require FDA approval before ads go on air and allows the FDA to assess fines only after the fact.

Even then, many critics doubt the fines will be much a deterrent. As Bill Vaughan, a policy analyst at Consumers Union, points out points out, "When a company can make more than a million dollars a day in drug sales, a $150,000 fine for running a misleading advertisement won't have much impact."

In fact, the bill is so soft that even Billy Tauzin, former Republican congressmen and current president of the powerful drug group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), praised the bill, saying it "will no doubt make a good system even better."

Not an unusual occurrence on the web, some commenters flesh out the issues:

Barely touches on the criminality of Big Pharma Posted by: heid on Jun 19, 2007 5:56 AM Current rating: 5

This article barely touches on the harm Big Pharma does or the insidious techniques it uses in promoting its products.

The key is that pharmaceutical firms exist to sell, to make profits. Their purpose is not to make us healthy. We forget that at risk to our health and even our lives.

Drugs have a constellation of effects, and pharmaceutical firms promote only a single one among many, ignoring the rest or calling them "side effects". Just take a look at the over the counter cold medications with the "side effect" of sleepiness, which are also sold under different names for precisely that "side effect" of sleepiness as aids for sleep.

Pharmaceuticals do almost no real frontline research. Most of the money for that comes from you and me - the taxpayers. Most research done by pharmaceuticals is on slight moderations of existing drugs to allow their repatenting, or for finding different uses for existing drugs. Worse, most of it is done for so-called ailments that never existed until Big Pharma "discovered" and promoted them, or for relatively mild but common conditions. In other words, what little research they do is focused on the bottom line - not on helping really sick people get better.

Big Pharma does its own testing, an obvious conflict of interest, and frequently hides its negative results, redoing and refining trials until they get the results they want. Then, the drugs are approved by the FDA, which is now beholden primarily to Big Pharma, and they are released on an unsuspecting public, and those who are unfortunate enough to be prescribed these drugs become the real guinea pigs.

Big Pharma has extended its influence into the medical world itself by outright bribing doctors, giving them gifts, providing nearly all the Continuing Education seminars doctors go to, and using the cheapest and tackiest of sales methods - such as using former cheerleaders as their primary sales people - imaginable.

In the patient support arena, Big Pharma has managed to distort even these groups by providing funding to them and often even creating them.

None of this even touches on some of the worst abuses, but does cover a fair amount of the techniques used by Big Pharma.

Now, we have a new bill that not only allows all this to continue, but makes it worse. It will now be possible for the FDA itself to start making and selling drugs. Even more money will be given to the FDA by pharmaceutical firms - and there can be little doubt that following the money shows what's really going on, so this addition of funds from Big Pharma to the FDA simply places the FDA even deeper into the pharmaceutical pockets.

RE: Barely touches on the criminality of Big Pharma Posted by: mirimac on Jun 19, 2007 2:01 PM Current rating: 4

There's also the scandal of Big Pharma being in cahoots with Medicare and the Insurance Cos. that manage Medicare.

As someone who relies on a number of drugs to keep me functioning, I honestly feel like a prisoner to the system, between needing to take these drugs (some of which have not gone generic yet) and being in the Medicare Part D w/ managing insurance company charging whatever suits them to charge me for the same drugs. My monthly drug bill runs around $500. Last fall I purchased my meds on Sept. 1 (by purchase I mean the copays, deductibles, etc.) On Sept. 15, the cost of two of my most expensive meds was increased quite a bit. That cost was passed on to me even though I'd already "paid" for them.

Then there was the drug that my doctor prescribed, that Medicare/Insurance wouldn't cover. The drug they recommended, which my doc then reluctantly prescribed nearly killed me.

My son worked hard to earn a PharmD degree and get a job working for one of the Big Pharma COs. His job was to track negative side-effects and report them in such a way as to lessen their negativity as much as possible. He didn't last a year. His conscience kept him thinking of all those who'd died due to various meds and whose lives were being negated by the company through him.

It used to be big oil that was in charge. Now I'm sure its big Pharma. Between the two, we don't stand a chance

Our new 'democratic' Congress is quickly teaching us to expect little more from them than from the earlier Republican Robber Baron Congress. Having Democrats merely slow the progress of the cancer is not a very cheery prospect. I, for one, want to see them cut the cancer out. But that would be too much risk to our elected representatives. After all, we're not the only ones paying them.