According to a recent Harris Poll, only 44% of people feel that drug companies serve consumers well - down a dramatic 35% in the past seven years. To put that into perspective, the reviled tobacco industry rates worse by only 14%. Listen to the words of insiders, including executives, salespersons, and ex-lobbyists: “The admired industry has lost its ethical way. It is motivated in promoting shareholder interest and the bottom-line at the expense of patient health.”
The latest scare tactic used by big drug companies is to convince consumers that imported drugs are unsafe. Why? Because the drug companies will suffer monetary losses if their manipulation and monopoly of the US drug market is threatened. In truth, many of the innovative drugs currently on the market are from other countries which enact price controls. Said one patient, “I once got a really good drug by negotiating the price in Sweden. I got a price that was 100% lower than in the U.S.”
According to Peter Rost, M.D., Vice President of Marketing for the endocrinology division of Pfizer, Inc., 700,000 deaths occur every year due to heart disease, despite 50% of these people using cholesterol lowering drugs. The drug companies claim the drugs fail because they are not used as prescribed. This reviewer of research believes that this erroneous conclusion is based on questionable and old data producing the greatest financial boondoggle in medical history. Billions have been spent on cholesterol lowering drugs that are based on skewed, outdated data in order to perpetuate a medical hoax!
This hoax is compliments of medical grants from major pharmaceutical companies that fund research producing the very results the companies need to promote their drugs to the market. They are insiders with the FDA, a relationship whose payoffs come in the form of riffs in the marketplace that allow companies to sell their products to unsuspecting patients and ill-informed doctors.
A SHOCKING REALITY
Arthur Kuebel, a 13-year veteran of drug sales to physicians states that doctors were paid $200-$2,500 to promote Vioxx at roundtable discussions and large dinner parties. (See the previously posted article on Vioxx for more on this topic.) Furthermore, Dr. Rost points out that, “In America, we do not have competition. Instead we have an oligopoly where companies pretty much set the price.” But, drug insiders whose conscience does not permit them to continue in such a defaming practice acknowledge that there is no reason drug prices cannot be lowered.
The drug companies are on a constant campaign of misinformation in an effort to support their profits and shareholder benefits. Meanwhile, drug company executives enjoy unconscionable salaries and lavish lifestyles. Drug salesmen have access to the prescribing patterns of physicians, and use that information to promote their habits and drug company profits in secret.
We report it as we see it. YOU DECIDE.
Do your medical homework and live a long life. Focus on hope and deny the hype. Turn off the television drug ads! Ask your doctor how much time he/she spends researching the drugs being prescribed to you. How much do they know about the universities that sponsor the research and whether there are potential conflicts of interest? The real truth is that the big drug companies can drop the price of drugs and still make big bucks, but they don’t. They need to stop harassing the public with phony ads instructing you to, “Ask your doctor.” They should be more focused on real research than real hype!
SOURCE: AARP Bulletin November 2004 Vol. 45, #10