Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health
Grow Youthful: How to Slow Your Aging and Enjoy Extraordinary Health

What the law allows pharmaceutical drug manufacturers to do

Lies, deceit, falsification

Most pharmaceutical research is lies

No pesky natural or traditional home remedies

References

Demand for pharmaceutical products depends upon ill health, so big pharma wants ill health.

Lies, deceit, falsification

According to Harvard Medical School professor Arnold Rehman, the role of the big pharmaceutical companies has changed from "developing the drugs that society really needs to trying to extract as much money as they possibly can from the healthcare system". (9) The overriding objective of pharmaceutical drug companies is to maximise their profits.

In 2000 the pharmaceutical industry spent two and a half times more on marketing than on research.(3) However a study in 2012 found that the situation is much worse - for every $1 they spend on basic research, they invest $19 in promotion and marketing. (10) Clearly there is no "crisis of innovation" as the pharmaceutical industry claims. Instead, big pharma is milking its powerful position whilst lying about its intentions. They have no incentive whatsoever to provide the cheapest, most effective treatment alternative for any ailment. On the contrary, they try to hide or discredit all remedies and cures that are alternatives to their current, most expensive, patented drug, even when these alternatives are demonstrably superior.(2, 4, 8)

"The goal of a health-care system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich. Today, the US health-care system too often serves to enrich wealthy investors and executives, while impoverishing, and even bankrupting, many working families." (15)

A successful pharmaceutical drug reduces your symptoms, keeps you dependent for the rest of your life, and extracts all the money you can possibly pay.

Golden rules for pharmaceutical companies (Black humour).

The pharmaceutical drug industry is based on patents and legal approvals. The granting of a patent and approval for sale for a drug or a manufacturing process provides the lifeblood for drug companies. They will do anything to secure as many patents as possible in order to stifle their competition, and maximise their profits by selling at the highest possible price.

It currently requires enormous capital for testing and approval before a drug is approved for sale to the public. In America, it often takes ten years and $1 billion to get a new drug onto the market. Only the biggest few companies have the resources to do this. This is just one way that pharmaceutical companies stifle their competition - they simply make it too expensive to compete - and they continue to lobby (bribe, threaten and lie to) to make testing as expensive as possible. This also ensures that nearly all testing of pharmaceutical drugs is financed by themselves, rather than other impartial bodies that do not have this conflict of interest.

At the same time that they make it as expensive as possible to test new drugs, nearly all pharmaceutical companies take dangerous shortcuts with their own testing. A study of clinical trials published in 2018 looked at the evidence that review boards used in deciding whether a pre-clinical trial can safely proceed. However almost 90% of 708 preclinical efficacy studies reviewed made no reference to a published report, making it hard to know whether the study would even pass peer review. 95% of the studies contained no mention of the processes they used to avoid bias. (17)

The bigger and more profitable the industry, the more it can afford to lobby (bribe, threaten and lie to) politicians and decision makers to pass laws that benefit the industry.

Marcia Angell, M.D. is an American physician, author, and the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She has had a distinguished and high-ranking career. This article draws on her book The Truth About The Drug Companies.(4)

Usually new drugs approved for patent and sale are me-too drugs, with a slightly altered molecule to an existing drug. In the USA, the testing required for drugs does not require that they be compared with their close cousins, with any other drugs, or with any natural or traditional medicines. It is sufficient to show that they are effective in curing a particular ailment. The fact that they may be less effective than all the alternatives is deliberately concealed. Frequently a new and less effective me-too drug will go on sale with a new patent, a high price, and a campaign to hide or discredit the expired-patent drug it is replacing.(4)

Many drugs are ineffective, with falsified studies (1, 2, 18), lobbying pressure, and placebo effects distorting their use. "In more than half of the clinical trials for six leading antidepressants, the drugs did not outperform the placebo".(5) With pharmaceutical companies funding the research into and testing of their own products, there is tremendous pressure on the researchers to come up with the desired results - regardless of whether the drugs really work or not. Huge bribes, threats, and the making or breaking of careers are all at stake. "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published."(4)

Statin drugs are an example of a pharmaceutical that is promoted using falsified trials and a massive campaign of misinformation, bribery and corruption. A study has found that "the epidemic of heart failure and atherosclerosis that plagues the modern world may paradoxically be aggravated by the pervasive use of statin drugs." (11) This was confirmed again in 2018. (19)

"Today, the USA pays, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Meanwhile, nearly one of five Americans cannot afford to fill the prescriptions their doctors write." (15) Healthcare expenditure on hospitals, doctors and the conventional medical system is growing faster than both inflation and GDP. It now accounts for 18% of GDP. (16) The irony, as Grow Youthful shows, is that in nearly every case there is a better alternative to these expensive prescription drugs.

Most pharmaceutical research is lies

85% of trials of pharmaceutical drugs are completely funded by the company which will be selling that drug. This is a blatant conflict of interest. (20)

Most research findings published by pharmaceutical companies are false. Up to three quarters (75%) of published research in the medical literature concerning pharmaceutical drugs is ghostwritten by public relations firms. Pharmaceutical companies routinely hire ghost writers or professional media consultants to ensure that the results of studies read the way that they want them to read - and they conceal potentially serious or even fatal side-effects. (1, 18)

Drug companies withhold complete information on clinical trials, undermining the the ability of doctors, hospitals, other scientists and researchers, medical bodies and associations, and the government itself, to make informed decisions. (2, 7) British MPs have expressed "extreme concern" that drug manufacturers appear to publish only about 50% of their completed trial results, (8) and warned that this practice has "ramifications for the whole of medicine". Richard Bacon, a senior member of the committee (7), said that the drug companies do not allow access to past trials "which bear on the efficacy and safety of medicines in use today". He also said that trials which gave a favourable verdict were about twice as likely to be published as trials giving unfavourable results. (2)

Dr Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, told the MPs that the pharmaceutical industry published more positive results than negative results from their trials, and "when you add together the published and unpublished evidence, you get a very different picture of the quality and effectiveness of those drugs". (7)

From The Economist "... the results of half of clinical trials are never published. These missing data have, over several decades, systematically distorted perceptions of the efficacy of drugs, devices and even surgical procedures. And that misperception has sometimes harmed patients." (8)

As well as being fully aware that some of their drugs are toxic, harmful and cause death and misery, pharmaceutical companies also sell drugs that they know are ineffective. Yes, they sell drugs fully aware that research shows they are useless in up to 95% of the cases for which they are prescribed. (12, 13, 20)

"We could stop almost all psychotropic drug use without deleterious effect", says Peter C Gotzsche, questioning trial designs that underplay harms and overplay benefits. These drugs are responsible for more than half a million deaths in the Western world each year, in return for minimal benefits. (14) In addition to half a million deaths, multiple millions suffer devastation to their lives because of these psychotropic pharmaceuticals.

Washout. A common technique used in pharmaceutical trials is the washout. Before the official trial begins, all subjects are given a dose of the drug. Those subjects who show any negative side-effects are not picked for the official trial.

A research article (6) published in 2005 came to the following conclusions. It seems that the manipulation and suppression of research results for financial reasons has worsened since then. (1, 18)

"... most claimed research findings are false."

"The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. Conflicts of interest and prejudice ... are very common in biomedical research."

"There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims."

Suppression of adverse findings and avoidance of necessary research particularly applies to the genetic modification of food.

A leading cause of illness and death

Pharmaceutical drugs are the third leading cause of death in the USA (most other countries too). And for each person who dies from a drug, there may be a hundred suffering from the side-effects of the pharmaceutical medications that they are taking - sometimes knowing that the drugs are causing illness, but more often existing in a haze of confused sickness and ailments, not having connected the dots...

No pesky natural or traditional home remedies

This is why drug companies are not interested in natural or traditional products, which are usually more effective than pharmaceuticals, and have no side-effects. There are thousands of examples of effective natural cures that are not used because there is no financial incentive for anyone to do so, or because they have been actively discredited.

Here are a just couple of examples:

References

1. Gotzsche P.C. et al. Ghost authorship in Industry-initiated Randomised Trials. PLoS Medicine 4, no. 1, (2007): e19

2. Erick H. Turner, Annette M. Matthews, Eftihia Linardatos, Robert A. Tell, Robert Rosenthal. Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy. 17 January 2008. N Engl J Med 2008; 358:252-260. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa065779.

3. New Doctor. Medicare Fact sheet 10. Issue 75, Winter 2001.

4. Angell, Marcia. The Truth About the Drug Companies. Scribe Publications, 2005.

5. Bruce Lipton. The Biology of Belief. Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. Mountain of Love / Elite Books. 2005.

6. John P. A. Ioannidis. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med. 2005 August; 2(8): e124.

7. Report in The Guardian Newspaper 3 January 2014, referring to a review of 20 existing studies by the non-profit Cochrane Collaboration. Also a review by the Department of Health, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and subsequent discussion by members of parliament.

8. The Economist. Spilling the beans, Failure to publish the results of all clinical trials is skewing medical science. Retrieved online 25 July 2015.

9. Jacky Law. Big Pharma, How the world's biggest drug companies control illness. Constable & Robinson, 2006.

10. Donald W Light, Joel R Lexchin. Pharmaceutical research and development: what do we get for all that money? BMJ 2012;345:e4348.

11. Okuyama H, Langsjoen PH, Hamazaki T, Ogushi Y, Hama R, Kobayashi T, Uchino H. Statins stimulate atherosclerosis and heart failure: pharmacological mechanisms. Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol. 2015 Mar;8(2):189-99. doi: 10.1586/17512433.2015.1011125. Epub 2015 Feb 6.

12. Mukherjee D, Topol E J. Pharmacogenomics in cardiovascular diseases. Prog. Cardiovasc. Dis. 44, 479-498 (2002).

13. Schork N J. Personalized medicine: Time for one-person trials. Nature. 2015 Apr 30;520(7549):609-11. doi: 10.1038/520609a.

14. Peter C Gotzsche. Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good? BMJ 2015;350:h2435.

15. Bernie Sanders, US senator. An agenda to fight inequality. The Lancet. Volume 389, No. 10077, p1376-1377, 8 April 2017.

16. U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $10,348 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. cms.gov. Retrieved 28/12/17.

17. Susanne Wieschowski, William Wei Lim Chin, Carole Federico, Soren Sievers, Jonathan Kimmelman, Daniel Strech. Preclinical efficacy studies in investigator brochures: Do they enable risk-benefit assessment? PLOS Biology. Published 5 April 2018. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004879

18. Arturo Casadevall, Elisabeth M Bik, Ferric C Fang, Amy Kullas, Roger J Davis. Analysis and Correction of Inappropriate Image Duplication: The Molecular and Cellular Biology Experience. Retrieved online on 24 June 2018. doi.org/10.1101/354621.

19. Rafel Ramos, Marc Comas-Cufi, Ruth Marti-Lluch, Elisabeth Ballo, Anna Ponjoan, Lia Alves-Cabratosa, Jordi Blanch, Jaume Marrugat, Roberto Elosua, Maria Grau, Marc Elosua-Bayes, Luis Garcia-Ortiz, Maria Garcia-Gil. Statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular events and mortality in old and very old adults with and without type 2 diabetes: retrospective cohort study. BMJ 2018;362:k3359. Published 5 September 2018.

20. Light DW, Lexchin J, Darrow JJ. Institutional corruption of pharmaceuticals and the myth of safe and effective drugs. J Law Med Ethics. 2013 Fall;41(3):590-600. doi: 10.1111/jlme.12068. PMID: 24088149.