Posted: Monday, April 13, 2009 12:00 am
At best, the notion of independent, accurate testing of pharmaceuticals is laughable. At worst, it would constitute 'pharmaceutical holocaust' denial. The stereotype of objective pharmaceutical studies and publicly-oriented health care priorities needs balancing with the fact that drug companies dominate the agenda, merely fund drug studies and ignore thousands of good studies showing nutrients, herbs and homeopathic alternatives with superior results and much cheaper.
Explains Andrew Saul, author of 'Doctoring Yourself,' "Health makes good sense, but it doesn't make a lot of dollars" - for Big Pharma, that is, which routinely hides adverse drug 'side effects' or buries entire studies showing drugs to be ineffective or worse than placebo.
The game plan: run studies of different populations until 1 to 2 show marginal (plus 10 percent) success required for FDA approval; give doctors perks and continuing medical education ("whisper in their ear"); provide free samples; aggressively market compound X for real or perceived disorders to a needy, susceptible public, then run ahead of inevitable lawsuits and the outrage coming from scores of disabilities or thousands of deaths due to compound X, then X2. Legal damages? Normally small fractions of one year's sales.
Welcome to the officially-sanctioned drug trade in toxic compounds for health, a sleazy over-world of lab coats, convenient science, and Wall Street-pumped drug firms funding doctors' education and supplying tens of millions of dollars for supposedly objective FDA trials. The revolving industry/agency door is well oiled, with very few squeaks.
The foxes are running the farm.
Chris Foulke, Corvallis