Re: pharmaceutical company paid doctors to prescribe drugs and run sham clinical trials

From: hrumph (indirect_at_anon.anon)
Date: 01/18/05 

Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:05:28 -0500

john wrote:

> http://www.drugcompanies.info/001298.html
>
> Here's how it would work: doctors who prescribed the drug company's products
> and avoided competing drugs were paid "consulting fees" of tens of thousands
> of dollars. And what kind of consulting did these doctors do? The kind of
> consulting that requires nothing more than signing a blank *** of paper
> and cashing the check, of course. And thousands of doctors participated in

Is there a list of names? I'd like to count them myself.

> this criminal scam, collecting untold sums of money in exchange for hyping
> Schering-Plough's pharmaceuticals to patients. (Medical ethics, anyone?)

Some..

> Doctors were paid even more money to conduct fraudulent clinical trials that
> would require patients to take the drugs for twelve months at a time, which
> of course rang up even more drug profits for the manufacturer and resulted
> in more kickbacks to the doctors. That's right: they're literally playing
> doctor with your life while pocketing the drug money.
>
> If all this sounds outrageous, think again: this is precisely the kind of
> criminal activity that now typifies the pharmaceutical industry and
> organized medicine in general.

In some instances...

> These companies will do anything to make a
> buck, including outright bribing doctors with lavish meals, free gifts and
> even trips to Hawaii and other exotic destinations, all under the guise of
> "continuing medical education" (CME) courses. It's all a scam, and the

some physicians..

> vast
> majority of physicians just go right along with it, pocketing the benefits
> and dosing up their patients with whatever drug they've been told to
> prescribe.
>
> I've seen it myself: a room-full of doctors in Hawaii, ditching a drug
> company sponsored "education" event, where airfare and hotels were provided
> for free. Why were the doctors ditching the class? Because they wanted to
> have fun in Hawaii, and attendance wasn't required after the first hour.
> It's basically just a paid vacation scam, courtesy of the pharmaceutical
> company. And it's happening every day, right now.

Yeppers, in all careers..

> Prescription drugs are so profitable -- some drugs are now sold at more than
> 500,000% markup over the actual cost of their raw ingredients -- that drug
> companies will do practically anything to sell more pills.

That's their business.
Air conditioning companies will do practically anything to sell more AC's.
Toy manufacturers will do practically anything to sell more.
Clothing and shoe manufacturers will do practically anything to sell more.
etc..etc..

> They

Some...

> invent
> fictitious diseases and urge doctors and parents to dose their children with
> powerful narcotics. They conduct fraudulent clinical trials, making sure to
> bury any negative results that would show how dangerous their drugs really
> are. They buy the favor of the media by pumping hundreds of millions of
> dollars into magazine, television, newspaper and online advertising. They
> pressure the FDA into delaying the ban on extremely dangerous drugs in order
> to squeeze out another twelve months of profits even while patients are
> dying from drug-induced liver failure.
>
> And the scam works: drug profits are up. Way up. Meanwhile, the American
> people are sicker than ever. Drugs aren't helping the population at large,
> all they're doing is turning the United States into a nation of chemical
> zombies who suffer from the extremely toxic side effects of taking dozens of
> prescriptions in combination.
>
> It's the greatest con in American history. It's the racket of the
> millennium. The drug companies are running the show, cutting off drugs from
> Canada, monopolizing the U.S. market, running the FDA, bribing doctors and
> killing patients all the while. Even based on statistics from conventional
> medicine, prescription drugs are right now killing 100,000 Americans each
> year and injuring another two million. And that doesn't count the tens of
> thousands of additional deaths caused by NSAIDs and over-the-counter
> painkillers.

Gee, except for the broad brush that is painted in this article and
exaggerations, I can't disagree with it.
Even government officials (various countries) have got caught taking holidays on
business trips.

So what do you want, john? I hear that aids patients are living longer due to
pharmaceuticals.

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