Patent “medicines” are among the greatest deceptions of our time. They are products of advertising — very sophisticated and subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) advertising.
#Percriptions #twill #sbalich #tcot #Drugs #medicine #Doctors
What do patent medicines do for those persuaded to take them? They are palliatives that suppress symptoms. They do nothing to “cure” or in any way enhance the immune system. Nor do they make any claims as such, but the public misses this vital point.
The federal government, through the Food and Drug Administration, unleashed the pharmaceuticals upon the American people, resulting in massive and unbelievable profits. The American people didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against this monstrous and deceptive fraud. What a scam! What a cash cow!
The trigger happened in 1997 when the FDA relaxed the rules for drug advertising direct to the consumer (DTC). Only the U.S. and New Zealand permit this.
The new FDA rules allowed the drug companies to make claims unimpeded as long as they offered a phone number or website or referenced a magazine ad where consumers could get the “fine print.” The FDA knows as well as you do that people don’t read the “fine print” and most don’t read at all except a few words at a time. The public was as helpless before this charade as if they were little children.
So what has happened since then? Prescription drugs are a $360 billion a year business. More than $5 billion a year is spent on promoting them to the consumer market and to physicians.
When you go to the doctor with an ailment you expect that if you get a prescription that the choice of medicine would be made based on proven results for your disease. But that is probably not the case, thanks to the massive PR/marketing campaigns run by the pharmaceutical giants.
Physicians may think so, and you may think so, but the fact is that the information physicians get — even from some publications that are purported to be peer-reviewed — is often just a product of Big Pharma’s marketing arm. This is because Big Pharma is using ghostwriters to draft articles for publications and getting top-flight physicians to sign on as the “author” even though all they do is read the articles and suggest changes.
This fact came to light in 2009 when The New York Times and The Public Library of Science (PLoS) gained access to documents used in a court case filed by more than 14,000 plaintiffs who developed breast cancer while taking the menopausal hormone therapy drug Prempro.
PLoS Medicine tells us that between 1996 (when Prempro was first marketed) and 2004, Wyeth (since bought by Pfizer) worked with several medical education and communication companies — but mostly with a company called DesignWrite — to market the Premarin family of products. In its communications with Wyeth, DesignWrite noted that “Research shows high clinician reliance on journal articles for credible product information.” So, in addition to “full-length review articles,” DesignWrite recommended that the publication plan for Premarin products should include mini-reviews, case reports, editorials, letters and comments.
DesignWrite suggested that short pieces could be published quickly and were an efficient “means of placing important information about the therapeutic profile of an agent into the hands of influential physicians.” The company also explained that it would help Wyeth decide what data to present, recruit “authors,” choose journals, create abstracts and posters for medical meetings and “Position the product appropriately to influence subscribers.”
DesignWrite then drafted the articles — casting the drug in the best possible light — and submitted them to physicians for review. The reviewing physicians then became “authors.”
PLoS Medicine reports that there is no evidence the “authors” were paid for the use of their name. There is also little evidence that authors did much more than review the article and occasionally make an editing suggestion.
It is illegal for pharmaceutical companies to promote a marketed drug for a use other than those which are approved by the FDA. But articles in medical journals, newsletters and magazines are not considered promotional and the FDA considers them free speech and doesn’t regulate them. (However, try to get that past the FDA if you are touting the benefits of a natural supplement… or even natural foods.)
PLoS Medicine writes that, in the absence of data (or in the presence of data adverse to marketing goals), review articles in medical journals are crucial vehicles for encouraging off-label uses, promoting unproven benefits and for downplaying harms. In other words, Big Pharma can say anything it wants about the benefits of a drug or completely ignore known harmful side-effects as long these articles are run in medical journals, newsletters and magazines.
At about the same time The New York Times and PLoS were revealing Wyeth’s strategy on Prempro, researchers with The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) were looking at drug maker Parke-Davis’ marketing of gabapentin. Gabapentin is FDA approved for treating seizures and nerve pain that can occur with shingles. But it’s become the 10th-most prescribed drug in the world for a host of other uses even though there is no evidence it works for them. Physicians are prescribing it for migraines, fibromyalgia, hot flashes, depression, bipolar disorder, restless leg syndrome, anxiety, and a wide variety of other nerve and chronic pain issues. It’s even given to cats and dogs with chronic pain, reports Vice.com.
Parke-Davis was found to be pushing gabapentin on doctors via a rating system that ranked physicians by the dollar value of prescriptions they could potentially write. As Vice.com notes:
(Parke-Davis) zeroed in on doctors who were influential and affiliated with major medical centers, who they thought could encourage their colleagues to use gabapentin too. The company wrote in their internal documents from the mid 1990s that this strategy would be “one of the most effective ways to communicate our message.”… Parke-Davis executives spent hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting medical residents to—as explained in one document—”influence physicians from the bottom up” and “to solidify Parke-Davis’ role in the resident’s mind as he/she evolves into a practicing physician.”
The company hired medical education companies to write favorable review papers, original articles and letters to medical publication editors, paying $13,375 to $18,000 per article plus an honorarium to the authors of $1,000. In most instances the payments were not disclosed. The company also hosted teleconferences that connected doctors paid to moderate with other doctors. An internal company memo said “the key goal of the teleconferences was to increase new Neurontin (a generic form of gabapentin) prescriptions by convincing non-prescribers to begin prescribing and current prescribers to increase their new prescription behavior.”
According to an analysis published in JAMA in January, the medical-pharmaceutical trust spends $30 billion a year on marketing, and about $20 billion of that goes to persuading physicians and other medical professionals of the benefits of prescription drugs. They do this with face-to-face visits with drug sales representatives, providing free drug samples and other freebies, and offering payment for speeches that includes food, beverages, travel and accommodations.
A study published this week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that doctors who received compensation from drug manufacturers for promotional speaking, consulting, lunches and other expenses were seven to 10 times more likely to prescribe more opioids to their patients than doctors who received no money from the medical-pharmaceutical trust.
Now you must ask yourself if your doctor is intentionally prescribing a drug based solely on fees he or she had been paid by a drug company or because there is evidence the drug actually worked, and if the evidence of success is real or contrived by PR flaks.
I personally know of instances in which doctors have prescribed medicines for people despite warnings of harmful side effects — not to mention the side effects that occur but the Food and Drug Administration won’t admit to. In one instance a woman older than 70 was prescribed a drug for a urinary tract infection even though it was not recommended for anyone over age 60. In another, a physician encouraged his pregnant patient to have a flu vaccine.
Legally peddling drugs is a multibillion-dollar business. If a doctor prescribes a medication for you, be sure you research it and understand the possible consequences before taking it.
