The public overwhelmingly
trust doctors to provide effective health care, prescribe drugs and
offer advice that will assist them with medical issues.
Patients who have diabetics, high cholesterol and high blood pressure receive a huge portion of the drugs, and it has become overwhelmingly evident that people with these metabolic diseases offer a huge profit potential for drug companies, aiming to market their drugs. A review of various reports points to legal and court cases that has resulted in fines against these drug companies. Also, this author once listened to a drug representative advise a doctor about cholesterol drugs for this doctor to take. So in that case, the drug representative actual provided medical advice to the doctor in question.
Despite conflicts of
interest, ghost written articles promoting drugs, and fines, the drug
companies march forward promoting their drugs, and the trust in the
American Medical system is so great that little can be done, despite
alternative therapies like exercise and lowering carbohydrate intake can
be highly effective, the drugs rule the United States medical system.
With the profound influence by drug companies and and their sales representatives, one might begin to question why so much trust has been placed into the hands of medical professionals, despite huge fines have been levied against various drug companies. In a October 2001 copyrighted article by the Japan Weekly Monitor reported a case where a drug company had to pay a huge fine. In the article, Takeda Chemical Arm to Pay $875 million for U.S. drug fraud, the publications stated: TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc., a U.S. affiliate of Japan's Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd., has agreed to pay $875 million in penalties for its illegal marketing practices for a prostate cancer drug, the parent company said Thursday."
The evidence hardly stops here. This author had diabetes since his early 20s and insulin would have saved him much agony but instead he received drugs until he nearly died. Science publications reveal what he has discovered over the years: insulin restores the bones, brain, the immune system, the kidneys, lowers cholesterol and even improves arthritic conditions linked to diabetes. Consequently, this author has to take no cholesterol drugs, or any other drug, although he does inject lispro insulin every two hours. People often ask if he gets tired of injecting and his answer is simply that the benefits and rewards of injecting insulin out weights any burden the rigorous life he must live.
In fact, drug companies may
not be the least bit concerned about fines and legal action because
their skirmishes with the court system has not really hurt their bottom
lines very much. So they keep advertising and keep pressing doctors to
prescribe their drugs. In a 2004 USA Today article
Drugmaker admitted fraud but sales flourish, author Julie Schmit
wrote: "What happens to drug companies that commit federal crimes? For
the nation's No. 1 drug company, the answer is: some pain, more
gain...Pfizer's confession that the success of one of its top drugs was
built partly on fraud may have been humbling, but it isn't hurting the
bottom line. Neurontin sales last quarter rose 32% from a year ago, and
2004 sales should pass last year's $2.7 billion."
The above case is one of several reported by the media regarding this drug maker. In the 2005 Multinational Monitor the publication reported about an allegation against the company in the article Pfizer fraud alleged the report indicated the cholesterol drug lipitor had no science evidence to back up the claims of the drugs benefits.
"The lawsuit alleges that Pfizer engaged in a massive campaign to convince both doctors and patients that Lipitor is a beneficial treatment for nearly everyone with elevated cholesterol, even though no studies have shown it to be effective for women and those over 65 years of age who do not already have heart disease or diabetes," according to the article.
Other reports have
indicated that other cholesterol lowing drugs may not be effective
either. in the article,
Medical fraud alert: cholesterol lowering statin drugs save zero lives,
says comprehensive research published in JAMA reveals some truths
this author and a life long diabetic has believed for a very long time.
The article states: "The hype surrounding statins is the con job of the decade, and statin manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank. But all this begs the question: is there really any health benefit to taking statins? If so many doctors and drug companies are pushing this drug, it must be saving lives or improving peoples' health, right? Nope. A critical review of thirteen clinical trials, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reveals some startling facts about statins:
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Statin drugs save zero lives.
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Statins are utterly useless as prevention.
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Even in people with high cholesterol, statins don't reduce the risk of death one iota.
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There has never been a single study that demonstrated statins extend life for women."
More recently, Pfizer has been on the news for even another court battle. In a September 2, 2009, BBC news article Pfizer agrees to a fraud fine totaling $2.3 billion in the" largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice....The civil settlement also relates to allegations that Pfizer paid bribes and offered lavish hospitality to healthcare providers to encourage them to prescribe four of the company's drugs. These were Bextra, an anti-inflammatory drug, Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug, Zyvox, an antibiotic and Lyrica, an epilepsy treatment."
For years, many people have criticized the prescription of cholesterol drugs as nothing more than an illusion. The blood tests came back with lower lipid levels but it appears the drugs only tricked the blood test results and did not increase one day of one's life. In fact, the wise treatment of this metabolic problem would include lowering carbohydrate consumption, lower excess consumption of fatty foods, discontinue the consumption of corn syrup and vegetable oil. Vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup is found in many foods that people would normally consider healthy foods. The consumers must read labels. For example, some yogurt contains high fructose corn syrup.
Add exercise to this medical treatment, and you could certainly improve your health. However, not all exercise is the same. People should always consult their doctor before making in changes in their medical treatment or conduct their own medical research by going to Pub Med Central and researching medical issues. People can access other countries medical web sites also to obtain medical information. The author Norman Mailer prior to his death said people should not pay excessive trust to experts. However, the experts will say if one is a diabetic, then the person with this life-long disease ought to take cholesterol lowering drugs, even when their cholesterol levels have been verified to be within normal ranges. This author had to endure such an experience. As a person on a managed care program through the insurance company, he received a call from a nurse who kept insisting that this author take cholesterol lowing drugs despite his lipids stood at 125. The nurse went on for 30 minutes insisting this author take those drugs like Lipitor and Crestor. His doctor even gave him free samples to lure him into taking those drugs. Of course, this author took them and when he got home, he threw the baloney drugs in the trash. Now reports have began to surface that those drugs have zero or almost zero benefit.
One might begin to ask questions why we get so many drugs. Further, who funds the studies, why the studies had been conducted and why did the researchers come to the conclusion they did should be included in the evaluation. In reality, most people expect doctors to provide the necessary and accurate methods of treatment in regards to their particular medical issue. Cleary, the FDA has provided some warning for the drug Crestor.
"FDA has received reports of rhabdomyolysis in association with Crestor, as it has with other drugs in the statin class. In ongoing fashion, we are evaluating these reports of adverse muscle effects with regard to clinical severity and apparent relationship to the drug. FDA is comparing the frequency of reporting of muscle injury with Crestor to that with other statins, given differences in prescribing rates for the different drugs. Pending the evaluation of the recent Crestor safety experience, FDA is not proposing to change the US labeling for Crestor, but does want to re-emphasize to physicians to the importance of carefully following the recommendations in the current product label."
The condition described called rhabdomyolysis is the rapid breakdown of skeleton muscles. So there would be little wonder why older people often look frail in the elder years. Is it age or the modern medical system? More can be validated about this condition that causes muscle damage at Wikipedia.org. On thing seems certain: The Americans and people around the world have been scammed by the American medical system and its drug culture. What ever happened to the War on Drugs anyway?
According to the Journal of Trauma, authors Yi-Maun Subeq and associates stated that "rhabdomyolysis is one of the causes of acute renal failure." In the article Pentobarbital Reduces Rhabdomyolysis-Induced Acute Renal Failure in Conscious Rats they concluded that to be a problem. Further, the conclusion by the FDA indicates Crestor can potentially lead to this problem.
In the Journal of the National Medical Association the article Rhabdomyolysis: report of eleven cases the authors P.A. Ellinas and F. Rosner with the Department of Medicine, Queens Hospital Center, New York reported the same issue when patients suffer from the this condition. They state the condition leads to kidney failure. Their cases provide important information, which concludes the issue leading to kidney failure is chemically induced. In this case, the chemicals were alcohol and drugs. Here we discuss another chemical called Crestor.
"Rhabdomyolysis is a syndrome resulting from skeletal muscle injury. The term rhabdomyolysis is derived from the Greek for “striped muscle dissolution,” these authors concluded. They further alluded to the Biblical accounts where people ate excessive quail, which also led to this condition.
Essentially, a drug which has the potential to cause this problem of rhabdomyolysis should be used with caution and alternative treatments ought to be considered. More of the story is here.
A criticism of the original investigation of the cholesterol lowering drug Crestor will be
cited below. In the article The
truth versus hype in the Jupiter study concluded no benefits.
The author concluded as other articles have reported that statin or
cholesterol lowing drugs serves one purpose to bring profits to doctors
and drug companies. As the author reviewed the study some suspicious
conclusions arose.
"The second fishy deal on this study is that both the placebo group and the Crestor group reported the same number of side effects. Say what? Crestor is a potent statin, known for causing side effects, and the group taking this drug reported no more side effects than those taking the placebo. That’s real fishy. When you look at the most common side effect of statin drugs - muscle pains - only 19 people out of 18,000 reported this symptom: 10 in the Crestor group and 9 in the placebo group. Something totally fishy is going on here."
Yes something is real fishy and especially because the doctors want to ram statin drugs down the throat of every diabetic, even though this diabetic has a cholesterol better than any doctor or any man his age, they pressured him and pressured him to take statin drugs Why?
"There is so much excitement on the part of the statinators of renown because their coffers will soon be filled to overflowing with fees from AstroZeneca (and other statin manufacturers that want to piggyback onto this study) for speaking gigs promoting Crestor. (Here is a post on the payola to doctors promoting anti-depressant drugs. Drug company income from anti-depressant drugs is a drop in the bucket compared to the income from statins, so you can only imagine how lucrative it is to be a speaking statinator.) There is considerable excitement at AstroZeneca and the other statin makers because the physicians who are non-critical thinkers and non-study readers (sadly, the vast majority) will commence giving statins to just about everyone who walks through their office doors."
Beyond the court cases come ghost written articles. For example, if this author had some doctor's name attached to this editorial, but still the doctor had not written this review, then this information published would be considered to be ghost written. In the article Lilly ‘Ghostwrote’ Articles to Market Zyprexa, Files Show demonstrates such facts Elizabeth Lopatto, Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk reported on this topic in the June 12 Bloomberg new article.
"Officials wrote medical journal studies about the antipsychotic Zyprexa and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice called “ghostwriting,” according to unsealed company files. Lilly employees also compiled a guide to hiring scientists to write favorable articles, complained to journal editors when publication was delayed and submitted rejected articles to other outlets, according to documents filed in drug-overpricing suits against the Indianapolis-based company, the largest manufacturer of psychiatric medicines. Drugmakers’ use of ghostwriters has created “a huge body of medical literature that society can’t trust,” said Carl Elliott, a University of Minnesota bioethicist who has written about the practice."
In essence, the medical journals funded by drug companies and ghost written with doctors names on the articles represent both fiction and fraud. As a type 1 diabetic, I recognized truth from fiction with my own results. In fact, I found research articles in the 1950s and 1960s to be more accurate than the research papers published in the last decade. I compare my results with diabetic rat studies and that with my own life. If they don't match, I know the results have been fabricated. Most make at least some insulin, but I make none. Consequently, my body has become kind of like a human experimental laboratory to reveal and test articles.
As the ghostwriting tell turns from a possible fiction to reality, many blogs and news articles document these facts. In an article, Ghostwrting for premarin steroids provided additional supporting documentation for this fact, which few in the public actually know exists. In the August 5, 2009 New York Times article the author stated that the drug marketer had not stated its involvement in producing these articles.
"Today's New York Times reveals the not particularly astonishing fact that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals engaged a medical writing company to produce 26 articles pushing Premarin as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in women from 1998-2005. The articles were outlined and written by writers employed by Design Write, and then were sent to top academics in the Ob/Gyn field, who reviewed them, rubber stamped them with occasionally minor edits, and submitted them to journals under their names. In no case was Wyeth's involvement in funding the articles disclosed."
Why is this important you might ask. Articles with doctors names should be actually doing the research instead of creating something that could potentially be fiction, the drug company promotes the drug stating Dr. X says this is the greatest treatment since ancient Greece and the public believes every word because doctors have become God-like.
In another New York Times article Senator moves to block medical ghostwriting provided hope something might be done about this issue. In the August 20, 2009 article, Health Leaders Media quoted the New York Times as reporting "Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has led a long-running investigation of conflicts of interest in medicine, is starting to put pressure on the National Institutes of Health to crack down on the practice of ghostwriting in medical research. The NIH underwrites much of the country's medical research. Many of the nation's top doctors depend on federal grants to support their work, and attaching fresh conditions to those grants could be a powerful lever for enforcing new ethical guidelines on universities, according to the New York Times."
Of course many might find all this fraud hard to accept when for so many years, they have placed total trust in doctors. With the above citation, one could conclude that Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa might have some concerns also about the ghostwriting. For that reason, we should investigate further regarding Grassley's stand on this issue. In a press release issued July 2, Grassley addressed the issue of ghostwriting, which confirms other news reports as authentic. In the release Grassley asks top medical journals about ghostwriting, the senator asked eight leading medical journals to describe their policies and practices regarding ghostwriting.
"Grassley said his inquiry is part of his broader effort to establish transparency with regard to financial relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and medical professionals," according the the press release. "In December, Grassley wrote to Wyeth and DesignWrite, a medical education and communications company, regarding allegations that Wyeth hired DesignWrite to draft articles promoting the company's hormone therapy products and seek academic investigators to sign on as the primary authors. Previously, Grassley had written to Merck and Scientific Therapeutics Information, a medical publishing company, regarding similar allegations reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association related to articles on Merck's VIOXX studies."
On the Web site, FiercePharma, another story about ghostwriting pretty much convicted the drugs companies of their deceptive practices and the doctors willingly take their money. In the August 20, article AP: Glaxo reps aided Paxil ghostwriting by Tracy Staton confirmed the themes presented by other news media about the ghostwriting and Senator Grassley's request for information about policies.
As a member of the Senator Finance Committee he wrote the following: "Over the last year, the Committee has been examining a practice used by drug and device companies referred to as "medical ghostwriting." This practice involves payment from these companies to marketing and/or medical education companies to draft review articles, editorials, and/or research papers on the drug or device companies' products. The draft articles, editorials and/or research papers are then presented to prominent doctors and scientists, particularly those affiliated with academic institutions, to sign on as authors, whether or not they are intimately familiar with the underlying data and relevant documentation. It has also been alleged that the listed authors sometimes have minimal or limited input in the development and/or writing of the article. When published, the actual involvement of these listed "authors" is not always clear."
FiercePharma supported these concerns. "GlaxoSmithKline commissioned
sales reps to recruit doctor-authors for ghostwritten articles
supporting Paxil use, a newly discovered document shows, and even named
the program after everyone's favorite friendly ghost."As reported by the
Associated Press, Glaxo's "CASPPER" program dispatched sales
people to offer physicians help in writing and publishing journal
articles about their successful use of the antidepressant. The push for
journal articles was aimed at boosting Paxil's "product positioning" and
overcoming "competitive issues," the AP reports."
Upon review of these reports and allegations, one could quickly see that medicine might be more about business than one's health. For that reason, more people need to begin doing their own research and checking out what doctors tell them, investigating articles and see who has funded the articles.
In the article, Medical Control, Medical Corruption by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr, this author revealed some startling truths.
"Who is unhappy with this increased knowledge? The American Medical Association, which for almost 150 years has sought to institutionalize a rip-off and to keep sick people and their families oblivious to it. Thanks to this central committee of the medical cartel, the number of medical schools and medical students is drastically restricted, state licensure further obstructs the supply of doctors, fees are largely secret and controlled across the industry, alternative treatments and practitioners are outlawed, pharmacists and nurses are hamstrung, and the mystique of the profession rivals the priesthood, although priests have a somewhat lower income. Meanwhile, the customer pays through the nose, even if he does not go to an otolaryngologist."
