SOME THINGS TO
THINK ABOUT
HEALTH
- HEALING - WELLNESS
PAGE
534
How Big Pharma Has Invaded Your Life
How Big Pharma Has
Invaded Your Life
Ted Twietmeyer
6-20-7
This is dedicated to readers who
are NOT yet seriously ill or who do NOT serve as caregivers for the chronically
ill. Hopefully it will instill some very sobering thoughts. If you are one of
these fortunate people - live every day like it's your last. Not one of us will
ever know when some nasty disease will strike us and wreak havoc on our lives,
or the life of someone we love or care about. There are actually only a handful
of different ways we can get our exit ticket punched on this Earth. We may never
know when we'll meet the train conductor face to face.
As a caregiver, I can testify
that serious illness around you (or in you) will drain you even while you're
still relatively healthy, in countless ways which will test your patience with
the medical and drug professions. Expenses will bombard you from all directions
that will drain your wallet with insane, countless costs you never thought
possible. On top of all this, every year these costs increase. There is a
frustration doctors can create in your mind with their often frustrating
behavior and "standard of care" which all doctors must follow.
We see more and more power being
consolidated into fewer and fewer and drug companies and government
organizations. Now the FDA wants to suckle at big pharma nipples under the guise
of "fees." I'll not delve into that black hole in depth here as others already
have done so far more eloquently than I. But we will explore the medical and
drug profession which is connected at the waist like Siamese twins. The core of
this matter is the public's ignorant, blind trust in the FDA as their watchdog.
People seldom can help themselves to believe otherwise, as they are unknowingly
brainwashed to think that way by media. Is this a cultural thing perhaps?
There is also a well-known
phenomenon that everyone in the medical profession knows about - the "white lab
coat effect." This one is strange but true. Generic white lab coats were
originally designed to protect street clothes from chemicals and spills in a
laboratory. But it was discovered a long time ago that people blindly trust
almost anyone wearing a white lab coat! This is why many doctors wear them, even
though most doctors never step foot in a laboratory.
What a mistake it is to blindly
trust the FDA - this is akin to trusting Jack the Ripper with a sharpened knife
alone in a dark alley with a woman. But instead of a knife, today there are
countless pills which are equally dangerous. At least you KNOW that the knife is
a dangerous weapon. A pill is an innocent looking object, and stays that way -
until you take it. It hides very complex chemistry. When you take any pill you
roll the dice - will you get better or feel far worse? And what was in that pill
you took? Too late now.
It's almost totally impossible to
know which prescription meds will work right and which ones will not. Those
reassuring voices speaking daily on the squawk box in your living room
constantly tell you how wonderful these designer chemicals are, in spite of an
actor casually downplaying dangerous side effects. Web research can be highly
informative..
CORPORATE - FDA CONNECTION TO
DOCTORS
This corporate-FDA connection
most certainly fits under the cliché "The tie that binds." Western medical
profession is centered on treating A disease. (Emphasis placed on the letter "A"
here.) We give a dog a treat for behaving as trained. Or a child is bribed with
a treat for behaving themselves. Medical students trained to become doctors
learn to ever avoid uttering the word "cure." They use "treatment" instead. To
use the "cure" word is almost the career equivalent to a disk jockey using the
"F" or "N" word on the air.
When you enter their office, many
receptionists demand your co-pay up front or they may refuse to see you. They
"treat" you to a whopping bill for just thirty seconds of a doctor's time. So
much for the Hippocratic Oath.
When you are sick, there are
basically only five things that will happen to you upon seeing your doctor:
1. NOTHING HAPPENS - You are sent
home because it's actually a cold or flu. Translation: It's all in your head.
This might result in a referral to a head doctor as it did for many thousands of
Gulf War 1 vets suffering from Gulf War Disease.
2. YOU ARE MIS-DIAGNOSED - Not
detecting a serious life-threatening illness is the worst. Nothing usually
happens to the doctor because of his/her incompetence, because often the patient
DIES before it ever goes to court. Few people think about the hazard of mis-diagnosis.
DON'T schedule your appointment (if you think you are seriously ill) on the day
your doctor plays golf!
3. OFF TO SURGERY - Into the
hospital you'll go as an inpatient or outpatient, hopefully for a positive
outcome. God willing you won't contract a drug-resistant bug or two during your
stay there. (Hospitals are good at hiding infection statistics.) Hopefully,
while you're there the surgeon will do the RIGHT surgery on you. Diligent
surgeons will ask YOU who you are and what procedure you are there to have,
BEFORE putting you under anesthetic. Be sure to tell them a ghost surgeon OR A
STUDENT will not be allowed to work on you. Don't put it as a request - make it
a demand. It's your life and in reality it's up to YOU to defend it, not them.
The cold truth is you are just
raw material for doctors, not unlike a butcher working on a side of beef.
Without the beef, the butcher would not have a job to do. No real difference,
except that the beef can't sue the butcher. Never, ever lose track that being on
the table is only a business arrangement and nothing more. There is no real
charity in a commercial hospital. Don't think so? Try owing one of them any
money and see what happens to your bank account and property.
4. TESTS REQUIRED - Lots of these
are often required to confirm a diagnosis. That's part of the "standard of care"
all physicians must follow. A doctor's malpractice insurance requires them to
follow the standard of care or risk being cancelled. Again, lawyers really
determine what a doctor's limits are. And you'll most likely be going back to
the doctor (paying again) for a review of the results. If something is found in
a test, count on MORE TESTS being prescribed. Too many prescribed tests can be a
sign of incompetence. If the doctor finally says that he/she doesn't know what's
wrong, ask a friend of relative for the name of a good proven doctor who is
known to hopefully be more competent than your previous one.
5. PRESCRIPTIONS - You will most
likely travel straight from the doctor's office to the pharmacy to get the
latest drug pushed by big pharma reps. who visit your doctor regularly. This may
happen even if tests are scheduled as a precaution, such as when you are in pain
or have an infection. If you are lucky, you might even get free samples of big
pharma's latest "designer drug" to make you better. Note the key word here is to
get "better," not be cured.
Most doctors tend to focus on
using number 1 or 5 above. Someone said it all perfectly many years ago: "A
patient cured is a customer lost."
If they follow the standard and
something goes wrong that isn't their fault and you are hurt or even die, the
doctor probably cannot be successfully sued. I lost a relative 5 years ago to
MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, commonly known as a drug
resistant Staph infection) that entered his body from an IV while still IN the
operating room.
Methicillin is such a strong drug
that it's one of the few intravenous drugs still stored and delivered to
patients in a glass bottle. Yet even this drug couldn't stop the infection.
The hospital lied and said that
this Staph germ is everywhere. In reality, tests established several years
earlier that the MRSA version of Staph evolved in operating rooms. It is
actually resistant to antiseptics used to sterilize operating rooms. In some
cities, operating rooms were closed off and gasses to kill everything off. Yet
no lawyer would touch the MRSA case, even though it was a clear case of
incompetence. A simple alcohol swab would have easily sterilized the IV entry
site on his neck.
There is a only a small
distinction between illegal drug dealers in hidden locations cooking up powerful
"designer drugs" to strongly addict people, and the latest "Designer drugs" from
major pharmaceutical manufacturers. Did you see the difference? One is spelled
with a "D" instead of a "d." Otherwise they are the same. Will future street
drug pushers go the legal route, and just start their own big pharma companies?
Who knows - one day even illegal Crack might become a prescription. Let's hope
not, but only time will tell. Drugs being pushed on television today have so
many side effects, that just 20 years ago they would never be allowed on the
market.
DRUG PUSHING MACHINERY
But is there a machine behind all
this to legally keep pushing these chemical cocktails into mainstream America?
Could this be the barrage of drug commercials on radio, TV, newspapers and
magazines?
There exists a well known,
established method to control the human mind. It doesn't involve the MK-Ultra
program. It doesn't requite electrodes, RF mind control, water boarding or
hypnosis. It doesn't even employ forced drugging. What is it? Simple repetition.
Television shows are carefully designed to have a cliff-hanger hit the viewer,
and then WHAMMO on comes a drug commercial repeat, such as the smiling idiot
holding a limp garden hose.
One thirty second non-prime time
television ad costs several hundred thousand dollars, to over a million dollars
during sporting events and prime time.
But drug companies don't mind
paying high TV advertising prices for a reason.
Do these expensive TV drug ads
pay for themselves? Drug companies see it purely as an investment and part of
the cost of doing business. These companies know that they can brainwash a
certain percentage of the people a given drug is targeted for. These people in
turn go beg their physicians for these drugs, staying on them from several years
to perhaps a lifetime. Or at least until the drug is taken off the market after
enough patients die.
Even if a small number of
patients are brainwashed, the commercial has just paid for itself many times
over as we shall see. We can crunch some simple numbers to conservatively look
at the payoff. Keep in mind that the raw materials to make almost ANY drug are a
few pennies. Profit margins are measured in thousands of percent. It costs mere
pennies to manufacture any given drug on today's high speed machinery.
Let's look at a typical health
maintenance prescription drug we'll call drug "X." For simplicity we'll leave
out the ever increasing cost of drug X each year and just use a flat price. Of
course local and on-line pharmacies will some make money off re-selling drug X -
but their profits is quite small compared with drug company profits as we shall
see.
1. Drug X - Patient cost is
typically $100.00 per month, which equates to $1200.00 per year.
2. If a patient is on drug X for
5 years before it's taken off the market because patients DIE from it, the total
expenditure by a patient for those five years is a whopping $6,000.00. Of
course, this total doesn't include numerous follow-up doctor visit costs and
additional prescription drugs that might be needed to counter side effects of
drug X.
3. If across the United States
200,000 patients take drug X (a conservative number to be sure,) the drug X
manufacturer will have 240 MILLION DOLLARS in sales EACH YEAR. This results in
conservative total drug sales over 5 years of 1.2 BILLION dollars. The TV ad has
paid for itself in just one year more than 200 times over. But it won't be a
mere 200,000 patients that take drug X for some common malady. If there won't be
an estimated market measured in millions of patients, no drug company will be
interested. Sadly, this is why numerous rare afflictions will probably never
have a drug to cure or slow disease progress. It's all about profit,
shareholders and greed and not medicine in the final analysis for every drug
companies. Curing patients is an unwanted side effect drug companies don't want.
Many wiser patients become well
again without taking any prescriptions at all.
MS - ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE
DISEASES
Think that drug X is expensive?
Not compared to some other "designer" drugs for health maintenance which never
cure any diseases. With cancer, you either get better or die. With MS, disease
treatment can last the length of a normal lifetime and cost a staggering sum of
money, just to try to live a somewhat normal life. Even then, a patient is never
cured of it. No need to carry a wallet either.
Some drugs which are incredibly
expensive are also highly successful. Since these drugs are pushed by doctors,
many never need to advertise on television at all. They don't need to because of
the staggering profits these drugs earn all year round.
Let's look at the details for
just one of these phenomenally successful drugs - Copaxone.
Felt-tip marker shown for
size comparison.
Copaxone Pre-loaded syringe
- one of the most popular drugs used to treat MS
Copaxone comes as 30 pre-loaded
syringes in a box, one injection for each day of the month. They are shipped
monthly via overnight courier and are packed in a Styrofoam box with icepacks
for temperature stabilization.
Cost for above syringe used for
daily injection: $63.00
Minimum prescription order
shipped: 30 syringes
Injections required per year: 365
Length of time patient takes this
drug: Remainder of their life
Storage: Refrigeration
Number of patients cured: 0.
Effectiveness to slow MS
progression according to data sheet: 7% average
Chemistry by which Copaxone
works: Unknown according to manufacturer's data sheet.
Sales in 2003: $720,000,000.00
This drug approved only treatment
of relapsing/remitting MS. It cures NOTHING and officially has an unknown
mechanism according to the drug's data sheet, but was still FDA approved! How
can this be possible? FDA Connections?
I know from numerous experiences
as a caregiver that many emergency room doctors don't have a clue what Copaxone
is - although most MS patients know about it even if they aren't on it.
Apparently homework for many doctors ends once they earn their MD degree.
Some foolishly think that a
socialized public healthcare system will pay for Copaxone. Not so. The UK health
system refuses to provide it to patients according to numerous on-line personal
health histories posted on various MS websites. What do socialized medicine
doctors in the UK give as a reason for this? "Too expensive" is what they are
often told. Any patient that wants to obtain the drug must be able to pay for it
themselves. This is equivalent to paying every month for a mortgage on a large
home - a home they will never see or own.
In the UK, a local pharmacy is
more commonly known as a Chemist. In the early days before formal drug
treatments from big pharma companies, doctors prescribed drugs. These local
pharmacists mixed up chemicals according to prescribed methods to cure various
illnesses.
There is a cold truth about
socialized medicine today. If you have a serious disease like MS, it's in the
government's best interest if you just die. Many patients eventually become so
disabled with MS that they can no longer work. Hence, they cannot pay taxes
which go into the health system. Therefore, these patients become a negative
cash flow drain to the government's health care system. With the scandal of
vaccines in the UK now connected to Autism in school children, it's clear the
government there has little regard for their people's future. What does any
business (which government really is) do with a bad liability? Abolish it.
Logically, it's only a matter of
time before government-assisted suicide becomes part of life, but probably not
before more engineered diseases like MS are unleashed upon the unsuspecting
public. There is already strong evidence the later is happening with West Nile,
CJD, Anthrax and new bird flu strains to name a few.
Let's return to Copaxone, and
check out the profit numbers for the Copaxone drug racket:
It might cost Teva
Pharmaceuticals which manufactures Copaxone perhaps 50 cents for each filled
syringe (if it costs that much.)
Typical monthly discount cost of
Copaxone to a patient: $1,900.00.
Yearly cost: $22,800.00
Cost for a patient over 5 years:
$114,000.00
Purpose: To slow disease
progression by an average of just 7%.
Length of time patient takes this
drug: Until they die or switch to another drug.
Let's assume for conservative
comparative purposes that a mere 1,000,000 patients worldwide are on Copaxone.
However, the number of people on Copaxone worldwide today must conservatively
number at least several million patients. The drug has far less side effects
than the other popular treatment, Beta-Interferon. It's been estimated that
about 10 million people in the United States have MS, with thousands more
unaware they have it. Teva Pharmaceuticals announced about 2 years ago that a
THIRD automated plant built to produce the drug is now operational in Israel.
Did the new Copaxone factory
lower the cost of the drug to patients? No - instead the company increased their
prices. In fact, in just four years the drug's price has increased about $400.00
a month per patient. So much for mass production reducing patient costs. Greed
begets more greed.
For sales over a 5 year period,
total sales of Copaxone for just 1,000,000 patients worldwide (at US$1,900.00
per month) will result in the staggering sum of $114,000,000,000.00! Yes, that
really is ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN BILLION DOLLARS. Is this drug available
generically? Not at all, and it's also covered by numerous patents. Surely more
patents will be filed later to assure the drug company's on-going, tight fisted
greed can continue. Or they will cook up another "maintenance drug" supposedly
better than Copaxone.
It's very hard to imagine being
able to patent anything without knowing how it works. If you were to try to
patent any device and not fully explain in your patent filing how it works, it
will be flatly rejected by a USA patent examiner. As a patent holder, I quickly
learned from a patent lawyer that you cannot withhold any information as to how
a patent works. If you do, your patent can be rejected by an examiner or later
declared invalid in a courtroom when challenged. USA patent law states that a
patent must be written so that someone skilled in the arts can replicate it.
How could Teva been awarded a
patent several years ago for Copaxone - a drug which they cannot definitively
explain how it works or what it does inside the human body? This is outrageous
to say the least.
Copaxone syringes are made on
automated production machinery in three modern plants. This drug doesn't require
recombinant DNA or other exotic technology like other drugs such as insulin use
today.
Copaxone isn't the only medicine
an MS patient requires. Other prescription drugs pills and capsules are used to
manage the constellation of MS symptoms like sleeplessness, seizures, pain,
depression, nausea, etc... These can total 8 or more.
So what is in Copaxone? Although
claimed by some to rebuild nerves, this drug has only ONE ingredient: Calcium
Glatimer Acetate. And what is a key chemical element in cell and nerve
chemistry? Calcium. Get the idea here? Could a dietary change do the same thing
Copaxone does? This isn't known yet, but certainly worth exploring.
Remember that doctor's statement
earlier? "A patient cured is a customer lost."
What's next from Big Pharma -
prescription toilet-paper? Prescription food?
TREASURE AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVE
HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS NOW
Now the FDA is out to kill
alternative therapies and medicines by using various regulations such as
labeling, and new laws they want to enact. One alternative health care product
called SeaSilver was on the FDA hit list - all because of a labeling issue. This
product simply made from sea vegetables was hammered off the market by the FDA
for more than a year. The FDA demanded they change the label to more clearly
define the benefits of the supplement. So they did, but that wasn't enough. Then
the FDA demanded they add a preservative to it and change the labeling again. So
they did that, too.
The company finally made a
comeback after the Gestapo left their lives and were selling product again, but
irreversible damage was done. Now SeaSilver has permanently closed as a company.
Why? Because the government has taxpayer-funded lawyers on their payroll, but
small companies must hire lawyers to defend themselves from them.
In the final analysis,
alternative food and supplement companies are hiring lawyers to defend
themselves from themselves, because both private and corporate taxes are paying
for government lawyers to attack them.
I salute people like Jeff Rense,
Rev. Ted Pike, Dr. Patricia Doyle and many others. They sound the alarm when we
are threatened with losing our rights, and losing access to alternative
non-prescription treatments and supplements. If the Codex Alumentarius model is
ever fully enacted in America, it will end access to dietary supplements and
hope for better health for millions of people. But then, maybe that really is
the government agenda after all - a sick, twisted attempt to "cull the masses."
If citizens in America don't
start standing up for their right to cure and treat themselves for their
illnesses, their hands will be tied by greedy big pharma. And when these same
sick people find that big pharma "designer drugs" won't cure any of their
serious illness, it may be too late to obtain an alternative. But that might be
the master plan all along.
Remember this the next time
you're ill -
"A patient cured is a customer
lost."
Ted Twietmeyer
www.data4science.net
FDA Tyranny to Become Law
BY:
Byron J. Richards, CCN
Truth in Wellness
July 12, 2007
On Wednesday, July11, 2007 the House passed HR.2900 without allowing the Ron
Paul (R-TX) amendments to protect dietary supplements. Representatives Frank
Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and others
falsely proclaimed that they were doing America a favor by passing this sweeping
FDA-supported legislation that grants the rouge agency more power and money, and
even transforms it into a quasi drug company.
Both the House and Senate (S.1082) have made the fatally flawed assumption
that the reason for so many deaths and injuries from drugs was due to the FDA’s
lack of resources. In reality, it is the INTENTION of FDA management that is the
problem, combined with the simple fact that multiple drugs are extremely toxic
and don’t work as advertised. Giving the FDA more power and money will only
cause the agency to speed more drugs onto the market faster with even less
safety testing – while abusing its power and actively stamping out competition
to drugs.
FDA management is in bed with Big Pharma and this new legislation makes
matters significantly worse through the creation of the Reagan-Udall Foundation
for the FDA. This new entity places the FDA in charge of drug design, drug
patents, drug licenses, and the creation of new marketing entities/companies.
Such a relationship with private industry is an unprecedented conflict of
interest, totally at odds with drug safety. The current commissioner of the FDA,
Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. is little more than a Big Biotech sales rep with
massive industry connections.
The House, like the Senate, will continue to allow direct to consumer
advertising of new drugs with unknown risks – a flagrant safety risk that will
cost many people their lives. Congressional leaders said they couldn’t prevent
this advertisement for fear of violating the first amendment rights of drug
companies. What a joke. The FDA routinely squashes the first amendment rights of
American citizens to understand natural health options and the science that
explains how they can prevent and treat disease. Thus, the first amendment
argument is simply a matter of convenience. The FDA wants to actively suppress
information that will help people, yet allow highly risky and misleading
promotion of toxic substances often for untested uses. The FDA even wants to
prevent citizens from suing drug companies when they are injured, thus
protecting Big Pharma. FDA tyranny, based on this type of arbitrary and
unrestrained exercise of power, is used to promote and protect the
pharmaceutical industry while at the same time undermining the dietary
supplement industry.
Both the House and Senate think it is completely fine that the drug industry
pay the FDA fees so that the FDA can approve new drugs faster. Indeed, the FDA
and Big Pharma met 112 times to work out their partnership before the FDA let
Congress know what it wanted to see in HR.2900 and S.1082. This is like paying
the mob for protection. A careful look at the history of the FDA shows it is
little more than a bully that protects vested interests at the expense of human
health. It is a pitiful agency. It is little wonder than the majority of
Americans don’t trust the FDA.
Big Pharma owns the FDA and Congress. The drug industry sees FDA management
and Congressional leaders as a training pool for future Big Pharma jobs – based
on how well Big Pharma is supported. There will certainly be plenty of rewards
to pass out after this legislation becomes law.
It is a sick situation that this new fake safety legislation provides the FDA
with unprecedented new power to stamp out competition to drug companies as well
as expose Americans to far greater safety risks than ever before. Provisions
within the legislation that creates the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA will
allow the FDA to remove any dietary supplement from the market based on its
whim.
It is now only a matter of time and a formality before HR.2900 and S.1082
become law. There will be a little bit of haggling in the conference committee,
as Big Pharma will takes its last chance at watering down any meaningful reform
(of which there is very little). Big Pharma will whine that this legislation is
too tough on them, which is a fallacy. This legislation is the Big Pharma dream
come true. In a football analogy the only question is the final score. Will Big
Pharma win by 28-7 or will it win by 42-7. Big Pharma has just cleaned the clock
of Americans. We should not forget the gutless Congressional puppets that made
it happen.
A new tone has been set. A new chart has been plotted. Congress has
transformed the FDA into a quasi drug company with unprecedented new regulatory
power to control all health options in America. How many deaths and injuries
will it take for a comatose and medicinally-overdosed public to wake up?
Related Articles:
1. How the FDA is Becoming a Drug Company, Part 1, 6-14-07
2. FDA Collaboration with Big Pharma Raises Eyebrows 6-7-07
3. Understanding the Threat to Dietary Supplements, Part 1, 5-15-07
4. Senators Chose Big Pharma Over the Best Interests of U.S. Citizens 5-9-07
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to the many sources and the teachers for this knowledge
and wisdom that is helping us on our journey.
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