Massive
medical fraud exposed: pharmaceutical company paid doctors
to prescribe drugs and run sham clinical trials
Here's a must-read article for anyone interested in learning
how the pharmaceutical industry really operates. It's a case
of aggressive marketing gone bad, with a mixture of corrupt
physicians, underhanded payola and a near-total disregard
for patient health. And yet it's business as usual in the
pharmaceutical industry: drug maker Schering-Plough, one
of the largest drug companies in the world, has been outright
bribing physicians to prescribe drugs and operate sham clinical
trials.
Here's how it would work: doctors who prescribed the drug
company's products and avoided competing drugs were paid "consulting
fees" of tens of thousands of dollars. And what kind
of consulting did these doctors do? The kind of consulting
that requires nothing more than signing a blank sheet of
paper and cashing the check, of course. And thousands of
doctors participated in this criminal scam, collecting untold
sums of money in exchange for hyping Schering-Plough's pharmaceuticals
to patients. (Medical ethics, anyone?)
Doctors were paid even more money to conduct fraudulent
clinical trials that would require patients to take the drugs
for twelve months at a time, which of course rang up even
more drug profits for the manufacturer and resulted in more
kickbacks to the doctors. That's right: they're literally
playing doctor with your life while pocketing the drug money.
If all this sounds outrageous, think again: this is precisely
the kind of criminal activity that now typifies the pharmaceutical
industry and organized medicine in general. These companies
will do anything to make a buck, including outright bribing
doctors with lavish meals, free gifts and even trips to Hawaii
and other exotic destinations, all under the guise of "continuing
medical education" (CME) courses. It's all a scam, and
the vast majority of physicians just go right along with
it, pocketing the benefits and dosing up their patients with
whatever drug they've been told to prescribe.
I've seen it myself: a room-full of doctors in Hawaii, ditching
a drug company sponsored "education" event, where
airfare and hotels were provided for free. Why were the doctors
ditching the class? Because they wanted to have fun in Hawaii,
and attendance wasn't required after the first hour. It's
basically just a paid vacation scam, courtesy of the pharmaceutical
company. And it's happening every day, right now.
Prescription drugs are so profitable -- some drugs are now
sold at more than 500,000% markup over the actual cost of
their raw ingredients -- that drug companies will do practically
anything to sell more pills. They invent fictitious diseases
and urge doctors and parents to dose their children with
powerful narcotics. They conduct fraudulent clinical trials,
making sure to bury any negative results that would show
how dangerous their drugs really are. They buy the favor
of the media by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into
magazine, television, newspaper and online advertising. They
pressure the FDA into delaying the ban on extremely dangerous
drugs in order to squeeze out another twelve months of profits
even while patients are dying from drug-induced liver failure.
And the scam works: drug profits are up. Way up. Meanwhile,
the American people are sicker than ever. Drugs aren't helping
the population at large, all they're doing is turning the
United States into a nation of chemical zombies who suffer
from the extremely toxic side effects of taking dozens of
prescriptions in combination.
It's the greatest con in American history. It's the racket
of the millennium. The drug companies are running the show,
cutting off drugs from Canada, monopolizing the U.S. market,
running the FDA, bribing doctors and killing patients all
the while. Even based on statistics from conventional medicine,
prescription drugs are right now killing 100,000 Americans
each year and injuring another two million. And that doesn't
count the tens of thousands of additional deaths caused by
NSAIDs and over-the-counter painkillers.
It's not an exaggeration to call this a medical holocaust.
These drug companies seem determined to dose the entire population
with as many simultaneous prescriptions as possible, as long
as it generates profits for their shareholders. Business
ethics are nowhere to be found in the pharmaceutical industry
these days: it's all about money, profits, power and control.
And the funny part about all this is that these drugs are
almost entirely unnecessary. There's not a single chronic
disease that's actually cured or reversed from any prescription
drug in existence. All these drugs do is treat symptoms and
barely keep the patients alive long enough to write another
check to cover their growing medical debt. Chemotherapy is
a sham and has absolutely no scientific merit whatsoever.
(Yes, it shrinks tumors, but it adds nothing to a patient's
lifespan.) Statin drugs are a con, and yet they're being
over-prescribed for all sorts of chronic disorders that actually
need to be treated with nutrition and exercise, not drugs.
And over-the-counter drugs are both extremely dangerous and
highly ineffective. NSAIDs kill some 40,000 patients each
year from intestinal bleeding -- and yet offer no real benefit
to patients that couldn't be achieved from simple changes
in diet and exercise.
The FDA, meanwhile, watches all this and focuses its own
efforts on discrediting herbal supplements like ephedra.
The agency seems determined to outlaw or regulate all nutritional
supplements, thereby making vitamins illegal and practically
guaranteeing another decade of outrageous profits for drug
companies. It's no surprise: most FDA employees used to work
for drug companies (or plan to in the near future). Many
FDA employees maintain strong financial ties to the pharmaceutical
industry. They're simply out to crush the natural health
industry and thereby boost their own personal profits from
pharmaceuticals.
Modern medicine is in shambles, folks. It's a train wreck.
We're sicker, fatter and more depressed than ever. And the
really good advice that people need isn't reaching them.
Good health is really simple, it turns out. Get lots of natural
sunlight on your skin daily. Eat superfoods like chlorella
and spirulina. Avoid all refined carbohydrates and processed
foods. Ban soft drinks from your life. Never touch cigarettes.
Pick up strength training, yoga, pilates, cycling, jogging
or some other physical exercise activity. And breathe, people.
Breathe consciously. Your body needs oxygen. Learn how to
put yourself in control of your own health: read Take Back
Your Health Power!
In a way, the massive fraud now being exposed in western
medicine is a blessing in disguise. Big Medicine has gone
so far over the top with aggressive marketing and downright
evil (if not criminal) tactics that the whole profiteering
orgy is going to come crashing down on them. Big Medicine
will soon be history -- remembered as just a moment of insanity
in the history of modern civilization. Some day, people will
say, "Do you remember when the whole country was dosed
up on chemicals?" They'll shudder with the thought of
it -- how we were all duped by the drug companies, by our
family doctors, and by the Bush Administration's complicity
in the whole scheme. They'll ask, "How could an entire
country go mad like this?"
And the answer, of course, is that the whole country was
doped up on prescription drugs that alter brain chemistry,
cloud the mind, and turn ordinary consumers into pill-popping
zombies.
It was a brilliant scam. It generated billions of dollars
in profits. And now the truth is starting to come out: Big
Medicine is about to become another sad chapter in the history
of human deception. Good riddance.
Highly recommended reading: Death By Medicine by Gary Null,
Ph.D.
Now, here's the full article on prescription drug bribery
originally published by the New York Times, included here
for educational and discussion purposes only, under fair
use consideration. |
