Tag: Big Pharma

Unbiased information on medicines : Why is it needed?

Pharmaceutical promotion practices HAI webinar, Oct 2018

Dr Barbara Mintzes (University of Sydney) joins Health Action International for an expert webinar on pharmaceutical promotion practices.

It’s a moral requirement to make money when you can to sell the product for the highest price, Pharma CEO says

Pharmaceutical executive defends 400 percent price hike

“I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can . . . to sell the product for the highest price.”

“The point here is the only other choice is the brand at the higher price. It is still a saving regardless of whether it is a big one or not,”

“I agree with Martin Shkreli that when he raised the price of his drug he was within his rights because he had to reward his shareholders,”

“If he’s the only one selling it then he can make as much money as he can,”
“This is a capitalist economy and if you can’t make money you can’t stay in business.”

said Nirmal Mulye. Nostrum chief executive, in an interview…
read Pharma chief defends 400% drug price rise as a ‘moral requirement’ in the Financial Times September 11, 2018

La prévention pharmacologique : un traitement qui rapporte

L’apogée médicale serait-elle déjà loin ?

Publié par Luc Perino, médecin généraliste, humeur du 06/06/2018

Le succès médical de l’insuline en 1921 s’est accompagné d’un succès commercial moyen, car malgré l’obligation d’un traitement à vie, la cible des patients était étroite. Dans les années 1940, l’extraordinaire efficacité des antibiotiques s’est doublée d’un succès commercial sans précédent, mais les traitements étaient courts, car immédiatement efficaces.

Trop peu de patients d’un côté, et des patients trop vite guéris de l’autre, les industriels ont vite compris qu’aucun de ces deux miracles médicaux n’était véritablement miraculeux pour le commerce. Il fallait des cibles larges et des traitements à vie. Cette évidence mercatique allait définitivement réorganiser l’activité de l’industrie pharmaceutique. Avec une ténacité aboutissant progressivement à canaliser la recherche médicale, à détourner l’éducation sanitaire de la population vers une prévention pharmacologique et, in fine, à circonscrire la recherche clinique et l’enseignement universitaire.

Aujourd’hui, la très grande majorité des prescriptions médicamenteuses s’adresse à des maladies virtuelles (facteurs de risque) ou potentielles (gènes ou cancers dépistés) qui n’ont jamais été cliniquement vécues par les individus et ne le seront probablement jamais. Cette médicamentation de la société a créé de nouvelles maladies iatrogènes (celles-ci réellement vécues), et des addictions plus nombreuses et plus graves que les classiques addictions aux drogues illicites.

Depuis l’halitose (mauvaise haleine passagère) transformée en maladie chronique en 1920 pour vendre un désinfectant ménager transformé en médicament contre l’exclusion sociale, la liste des maladies et concepts pathologiques nouveaux créés par cette recherche marchande ne cesse de s’accroître. Ménopause, dysfonction érectile, dysphorie prémenstruelle, insomnies crées par les benzodiazépines, timidité, décrets d’anomalies métaboliques, tristesse ou fatigues passagères, allergies alimentaires factices, hyperactivité, colère, hypertensions labiles ou approximatives, dépressions ou migraines chronicisées par leur traitement, dépendance irréversible aux opioïdes, pour ne citer que les plus connues.

Mais il serait injuste de n’accuser que big pharma et d’élaborer une théorie du complot. La réalité est plus simple, la naïveté anthropologique qui a façonné les religions se déplace et se prolonge en d’autres croyances : une gélule peut retarder la sénescence ou compenser les extravagances nutritives, un comprimé peut supprimer l’angoisse existentielle ou régler les conflits conjugaux.

Il ne nous reste plus qu’à espérer qu’il subsistera encore au moins 1% de la recherche pour les vrais, jeunes, rares et graves malades et pour les millions de morts par infections tropicales. Sinon, l’apogée de la médecine serait déjà loin derrière nous, car si les transhumanistes ont résolument décidé de prendre le relais commercial, ils n’ont pas l’intention de prendre le relais médical ni d’assumer la charge clinique.

En Savoir Plus

Staying with the Trouble : Making Kin in the Chthulucene

Donna J. Haraway’s poetic guide to finding connection in a time of crisis, 2016

Description

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway’s reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

“Awash in Urine,” chapter 5, begins with personal and intimate relations, luxuriating in the consequences of following estrogens that connect an aging woman and her elder dog, specifically, me and my companion and research associate Cayenne. Before the threads of the string figure have been tracked far, remembering their cyborg littermates, woman and dog find themselves in histories of veterinary research, Big Pharma, horse farming for estrogen, zoos, DES feminist activism, interrelated animal rights and women’s health actions, and much more. Intensely inhabiting specific bodies and places as the means to cultivate the capacity to respond to worldly urgencies with each other is the core theme.

More Information

  • Introduction and customer reviews on amazon and goodreads.
  • Donna Haraway lectures at the San Francisco Art Institute, April 25, 2017.
  • Chapter 5 Awash in Urine DES and Premarin in Multispecies Response-ability is lightly revised from Women’s Studies Quarterly 40, nos. 3/4 (spring/summer 2012): 301 – 16.
DES DiEthylStilbestrol Resources

Subsys, Fentanyl Spray Nationwide Bribery Scam : Opioid Manufacturer Insys Therapeutics ex-CEO Arrested

Dangerously Addictive Painkiller Prescribed for Patients Who Shouldn’t Have Received It

Opioid crisis in the USA : D. Trump declares a state of emergency health for this scourge that causes 100 deaths / days, while the ex-CEO of Insys Therapeutics, producing Subsys, Fentanyl Spray, is arrested for corruption.

“the company looked to bribe doctors into prescribing Subsys, a fentanyl spray, outside the usual course of their professional practice”

“the company started misleading insurers and agents into authorizing payment for the Fentanyl Spray”

Press Releases

  • Drug company’s billionaire ex-CEO arrested in nationwide bribery scam, abcnews, Oct 26, 2017.
  • Insys Founder Arrested Over Subsys Fentanyl Spray Marketing, Resigns from Company Board, rxinjuryhelp, October 30, 2017.
  • Dangerously Addictive Painkiller Prescribed for Patients Who Shouldn’t Have Received It, Says Whistleblower, nbcnews, JUN 5 2017.

The opioid crisis and the devastation caused by the pharma industry

Drug Dealers in Lab Coats

“The other day I was invited to a gala celebrating a leader of the pharmaceutical industry as a moral leader. I nearly threw up. That’s because the pharma industry bears huge responsibility for the opioid crisis that has killed more than 200,000 Americans.”

Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times.

Abstracts

… “One reason our efforts have failed is we ignored the biggest drug pushers of all: American pharmaceutical companies.
Our policy was: You get 15 people hooked on opioids, and you’re a thug who deserves to rot in hell; you get 150,000 people hooked, and you’re a marketing genius who deserves a huge bonus.” …

… “Today, 75 percent of people with opioid addictions began with prescription painkillers. The slide starts not on a street corner, but in a doctor’s office.”…

…”Our pattern of opioid addiction points to a tragedy, driven by the greed of some of America’s leading companies and business executives, systematically manipulating doctors and patients and killing people on a scale that terrorists could never dream of.”…

What happens when drugs are designed based on treating symptoms only ?

Shane Ellison, Award-winning scientist, masters degree in organic chemistry

Video published on 8 April 2015, by David Singer Enterprises.