How Big Pharma Controls Health Care

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Big Pharma: How the World’s Biggest Drug Companies Control Illness

By Jacky Law

Constable and Robinson Ltd (2006)

Book Review

In the ten years since British journalist Jacky Law published Big Pharma, the only good news is growing public awareness of the drug industry’s negative effect on human health. There’s no question the wealth and power of the pharmaceutical industry has vastly increased with the enactment of Obamacare in 2010. The latter grants major federal subsidies to both the insurance and drug industry.

Law carefully unpacks the fundamentals that position Big Pharma’s profits at the very top of Fortune 500 companies. In 2001, for example, they were number one, earning profits equal to 16-18% of sales. The banking industry was a distance second at 13.5%. While other Fortune 500 companies averaged 3.3%.

She attributes these obscene profits mainly to inflated prices Big Pharma charges Americans (as much as 5-10 times as much as in other countries), their deliberate efforts to bury and/or spin negative research, their bribing of doctors (with gifts, free lunch, training junkets and consultant fees) and medical journals (with glossy high priced ads), the refusal of the FDA to regulate pharmaceuticals (see FDA Now Completely Sold Out to Big Pharma) and direct to consumer ads aimed at convincing healthy people they need medical attention.

She devotes a whole chapter to “disease mongering,” Big Pharma’s deliberate creation of fictitious illnesses such as menopause, serotonin deficiency, post luteal dysphoric disorder and female sexual desire disorder. This is a topic I blog about frequently. See The Multibillion Dollar Depression Industry, Drug Companies: Killing Kids for Profit, Wyeth and the Multimillion Dollar Menopause Industry and Menopause Made in the USA

She also details studies dating back to 1982 revealing that low fat diets don’t decrease cardiovascular disease, as well as studies from 1992 revealing that cholesterol lowering drugs (statins) don’t reduce mortality. Thanks to the deliberate harassment and demonization of the researchers responsible for these studies, this information has only come into public view in the last two years. See Why the Low Fat Diet Makes You Fat (and Gives You Heart Disease, Cancer and Tooth Decay

Law is also highly critical of the role the pharmaceutical industry has played in minimizing the importance of poor nutrition and exposure to toxic chemicals in causing illness. She finds it extremely ironic (and immoral) that the federal government is clamping down on health supplements instead of environmental toxins.

28 thoughts on “How Big Pharma Controls Health Care”

  2. I have posted almost two hundred articles on this issue. I hope folks, and parents, in particular, are taking note of articles like yours here, mine and a multitude of others!

    Like everything else corporate capitalism touches, medicine has been mutated into a horror movie!

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  3. Big Pharma horror story right here! My cousin was prescribed anti-psychotics; Seroquel, Zyprexa, Haldol and a whole lot more. The man ballooned up to 246 pounds from 155 pounds. Of course, he needed more Big Pharma prescriptions due to the obesity-related issues caused by the medically induced obesity; high cholesterol, high triglycerides, heart disease, diabetes, the whole nine yards. His cardiologist even went so far as to berate my cousin for his weight gain. Told him to stop eating at McDonalds and go exercise. I pointed out to him that he knew goodness goddamn well what had caused this man’s weight gain.

    My cousin stopped taking all psych meds and dropped every single pound of the med induced obesity weight but unfortunately, his brain is now useless thanks to an overload of Big Pharma bullshit prescriptions. But the ‘good’ news is that he no longer has diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol or high triglycerides. The bad news is that he is no longer recognizable as the person I always knew. He has now been committed to a psych unit in a hospital here and I have his POA(Power of Attorney)because the man can no longer function and his brain has been so dis-wired that emotionally, he is all over the place.

    Now, the hospital is calling me to in their words, “get some insight into what could have caused his excessive aggression and hostility. For the love of …..!!!!! If I didn’t give them an earful, I ain’t never cussed a day in my life! And we all know, that’s a lie! So, they fuck somebody up with their bullshit and then when those Frankenstein’s create a monster, they don’t know how to deal with him.

    This just makes my blood boil. And believe me, it is more prevalent than many people think. So many lives have been destroyed by overuse of bad drugs and it continues.

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    • Shelby, Law mentions Zyprexa in her book. In 1993 Zyprexa was Big Pharma’s 3rd largest money maker, earning Eli Lilly a total of $4.8 billion dollars.

      We were all very excited about Zyprexa in the 1990s because the side effects of the older antipsychotics were so horrendous. I quite prescribing it after it caused two of my patients to suddenly develop diabetes. In one case, I had to send the paramedics to a patient’s home after the Zyprexa caused him to go into a diabetic coma. When a second patient became diabetic, I called the medical director at Lilly to alert him to the problem, but he didn’t want to hear about it.

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      • Dr. Bramhall, the main reason why people don’t take those psych meds is because of the horrendous side effects. My cousin, when he was placed on Haldol, immediately started drooling, incessantly. Had a painful erection for hours and couldn’t even grocery shop. I had to sit him down in the grocery store and shop for the both of us and of course, people were just staring. Now, the man is facing jail time for a second assault charge and making ‘terroristic threats’. I have never seen him this aggressive before, not ever! No one can do anything with him. He cusses everybody out. He is still refusing all meds even though he is being held on a civil commitment and when I was there today, the staff was scared speechless, or at least pretending to be as he cussed each and every one of us out in turn. Even me! I had noticed his aggressive, hostile behavior months ago and I alerted those worthless shits, but no one did a damn thing until the man was arrested.

        By the time this is all over and done with, I am going to need a straight jacket and a padded room, but I have to keep it together because both of us cannot be sitting in the same psych ward spitting at each other. Nor will I allow myself to be placed on that psychiatric bullshit!

        This is unreal!! Seriously!!! I intensely HATE everyone in the psychiatric profession, I really do!! Because they are doing more harm than good!

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    • Shelby, I have been ill for almost three years, since having two vaccines forced on me by my FORMER ‘physician’. This was before I knew any of this truth. I found out later that a man my age should have never been given these two vaccines at the same time. The effect has been to destroy my immune system to the point that I now have chronic sinusitis, and I will probably need surgery to correct the damage. Surgery I will never have! No way!

      And now, a friend of 42 years has been ill for going on five months now, because of a med prescribed for a skin rash on his arm. A fucking skin rash!

      He now has tremors all over his body, he forgets things a day after they happen. He is depressed and considering suicide, because he can never get a good night’s rest. He feels he is failing wife and family, and that, in some way, some how, he has brought this suffering on him and them. He has basically given up on life at the moment. And on top of this, he is my age and suffering from a prostate blockage, which he needs surgery to remove.

      He was to have this surgery two days ago. But when he went in for the surgery, they discovered that he has a staph infection in the urinary tract. It turns out that the same doctor who started this illness, almost five months ago, gave him some kind of scope test for the prostate issue, and didn’t prescribe, as he was supposed to, a dose of antibiotics afterwards. So now he has a staph infection to deal with on top of everything else.

      And my friend, up until last November, when all of this began, was extremely healthy and active.

      I lost a friend in Nashville to a staph infection that she got while being hospitalized. So now I am worried that I will lose this friend as well.

      Your cousin, my dead friend in Nashville, and my friend now, have all been poisoned by this industry.

      And as you know, most of the doctors and pharmacists could give a shit less.

      I am sorry your cousin had this crime perpetrated on him.

      Like you, I am fed up! There is nothing or no one we can trust anymore in this industry.

      Liked by 1 person

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      • Sojourner, I am absolutely horrified over what you have posted and I cannot tell you how sorry I am. I so wish that I had had a say in where I was to be born because it sure as hell would NOT have been in AmeriKKKa. This mess prides itself on the being the richest, most powerful country on the planet and yet, our stories alone, are the reasons why. Because people are being pushed to take these poisoned pills that are lethal to the body. People who still live in the few remaining rainforests are more healthy than we will ever be or have ever been because they’ve not had this poison mess wreaking havoc on their bodies. That is why they want to continue to destroy indigenous peoples rainforests and jungles because by doing so, those people no longer have access to natural medicines found in nature, but would have to, instead, turn to Big Pharma and that would increase profits, and at the same time, kill off those people.

        I visited my cousin today in the psych ward attempting to bring him some clothes and have him sign some checks to pay for his expenses and he cussed me out and told me that I was worthless, was going to burn in hell and some things that I cannot repeat here. I am devastated over what those vile shits have done to what was once a loving, caring man. He will never get back to normal. That is quite apparent. They are talking of placing him in a nursing home at the grand ole age of 43. That don’t even make any sense. But, his brain is wrecked!

        I weep for all of us who have gone through this and who are going through this because it is sheer hell!

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  4. Reblogged this on Puppet Master's Slave Market and commented:
    Systemic poisons introduced into the population to kill them should be free.Contrariwise like those that most dig their own Graves before being shot in the head,We the trusting patient Sheep pay our murderers in advance. NAZI Nation.

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  5. Pingback: How Big Pharma Controls Health Care, Book Review | Talesfromthelou

  6. Thank you for posting this. I was recently asked by a follower about menopause. I posted this information on my blog in hopes she will read it carefully before taking any medicine. I have never been able to take hormones, the pill .. . without reactions. I am glad that I listen to my body and refused to take them. Hormone replacement therapy was a scary enterprise for me so I declined.
    Honey

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  7. Pingback: “Big Pharma Has Open Contempt for the People Who Make Them So Rich” – An Outsider's Sojourn II

  8. Shelby, you wrote,

    “I weep for all of us who have gone through this and who are going through this because it is sheer hell!”

    This is why we need to keep getting this truth out there. So others know the dangers, so they know the treachery going on. And if some take the time to read comments as well, then this should be a warning also!

    I am so sorry about your cousin. I can’t imagine how hellish it is to experience something like you described here, and from a loved family member! Just know it is the Pig Pharma illness speaking and not him.

    I no longer believe in a hell, but there should be one!

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    • “I no longer believe in a hell, but there should be one!”

      I heartily concur!! And thank you for your kind sentiments, they are much appreciated. Everyone is telling me to just walk away from him, but how am I supposed to do that? If we all walk away when someone is having issues, how could we call ourselves ‘human’ if we are only there for the ‘good’ times and run with the bad and ugly times show up? We’ll be a sad bunch of shits for real if we, en mass just turn away from each other when we are in trouble.

      Again, thank you for your comment.

      Liked by 1 person

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      • This is unbelievable, “walk away?”

        This is the I, me and mine society we live in, Shelby, as you know! You may be the only person your cousin has left. And this is a crime that has been perpetrated on him, so why should he be abandoned.

        Your response here is the right one, Shelby. You can’t give up on him.

        We can’t give up on each other, or we are all doomed!

        Liked by 1 person

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      • Shelby, I just ran across the following quote and thought about what you had shared in your comment:

        “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands.” – Daniel Goleman

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  9. Pingback: How Big Pharma Controls Health Care | Dr. Kale Kirkland

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