Big Pharma : The Orgasm Scam

'Restless Vagina Syndrome':
Big Pharma's newest fake disease

By Terry J. Allen / November 9, 2009

It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.

You are among the "43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function," according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties -- but only if the woman feels "personal distress" about it.

So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.

By promoting the belief that "normal" women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch the disease. However, the FDA has yet to approve a treatment for women who fall short. Until then, they could try the Orgasmatron: a dial-a-delight spinal implant that rarely works -- and risks infection and paralysis. Or, for $60/month, pop LexaFem pills -- containing (how-could-it-not-work) "horny goat weed extract" in order to "feel like a real woman today." Its website promises, "You won’t ever feel unhappy again with LexaFem in your arsenal."

But the big swinging dicks of global FSD marketing (and off-label marketing) are Pfizer -- whose stop-gap strategy is selling women Viagra based on the fact that it works for men, and Procter & Gamble (P&G), which, using the same logic, has put its money on testosterone.

Viagra’s failure in trial after trial to work on women has not stopped doctors from writing 1.4 million off-label prescriptions. FSD is "a classic example of starting with some preconceived, and non-evidence based diagnostic categorization for women’s sexual dysfunctions, based on the male model," said John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute, in an interview with BMJ (British Medical Journal).

No drug follows the male model more literally than testosterone. Despite FDA refusal to approve P&G’s testosterone patch Intrinsa, U.S. doctors wrote 2 million off-label testosterone prescriptions in 2007. Like Pfizer’s little blue pill, the Intrinsa patch doesn’t really work for women. No wonder: Researchers don’t even know what constitutes a "normal" female testosterone level, and women with low levels of the hormone are as likely as those with high levels to be happy with their sex lives. And as filmmaker Liz Canner shows in her excellent new documentary Orgasm, Inc., testosterone is usually teamed with estrogen, which increases risks for stroke, cancers and dementia.

The companies and clinics that narrow the range of sexual normality to porn industry standards suffer their own disease. Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them, and vice versa. Either way, the syndrome is typically accompanied by a rash of conflicts of interest.

A Pfizer survey in Malaysia found that Malay women are even more diseased than their American counterparts, with "69.6 percent experiencing some form of FSD," according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, which also published an industry-supported supplement on FSD. Journal editor and urologist Irwin Goldstein denies a conflict of interest. "Science is science," he says. "It comes down to the bottom line. What the data shows, the data shows." Actually, no. Drug company-funded studies are more likely than independent studies to find the new drug superior to the old. Perhaps the bottom line Dr. Goldstein refers to is his income as a paid consultant for drug companies, including P&G and Pfizer.

Goldstein established an FSD clinic with Dr. Jennifer Berman, who now heads a Beverly Hills clinic and appears on Oprah. As one of the health professionals on a 1998 panel that received financial sponsorship from eight pharmaceutical companies, she helped define female sexual dysfunction. Some 22 drug companies, including Pfizer, had financial ties to 18 of the 19 authors of that panel’s report, the BMJ revealed.

"Maybe the best approach is not ineffective, over-hyped drugs with nasty side effects, but an end to disease mongering and a strong dose of comprehensive sex education," says filmmaker Canner. Her film hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone. 

© 2009 In These Times. All rights reserved.

Terry J. Allen is a senior editor of In These Times. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Nation, New Scientist and other publications.]

Source / In These Times / AlterNet

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Did Obama Make a Deal with Big Pharma?

Internal Memo Confirms Big Giveaways In White House Deal With Big Pharma
By Ryan Grim / August 16, 2009

A memo obtained by the Huffington Post confirms that the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby secretly agreed to precisely the sort of wide-ranging deal that both parties have been denying over the past week.

The memo, which according to a knowledgeable health care lobbyist was prepared by a person directly involved in the negotiations, lists exactly what the White House gave up, and what it got in return.

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government's leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada -- and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: "Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion."

Representatives from both the White House and PhRMA, shown the outline, adamantly denied that it reflected reality. PhRMA senior vice president Ken Johnson said that the outline "is simply not accurate." "This memo isn't accurate and does not reflect the agreement with the drug companies," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin.

Stories in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times last week indicated that the administration was confirming that such a deal had been made.

Critics on Capitol Hill and online responded with outrage at the reports that Obama had gone behind their backs and sold the reform movement short. Furthermore, the deal seemed to be a betrayal of several promises made by then-Sen. Obama during the presidential campaign, among them that he would use the power of government to drive down the costs of drugs to Medicare and that negotiations would be conducted in the open.

And over the past several days, both the White House and PhRMA have offered a series of sometimes conflicting accounts of what happened in an attempt to walk back the story.

The White House meeting took place on July 7th, as first reported that evening in the Wall Street Journal. Also on the same day, a health care lobbyist following the talks was provided the outline of the deal by a person inside the negotiations. That outline had been floating around K Street before being obtained by the Huffington Post. In order to learn more about its origin, HuffPost agreed not to reveal the name of the lobbyist who originally received it.

"That is the PhRMA deal," said the lobbyist of the outline. He then clarified, "It was the PhRMA deal."

The deal, as outlined in the memo:

Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.

1. Agree to increase of Medicaid rebate from 15.1 - 23.1% ($34 billion)

2. Agree to get FOBs done (but no agreement on details -- express disagreement on data exclusivity which both sides say does not affect the score of the legislation.) ($9 billion)

3. Sell drugs to patients in the donut hole at 50% discount ($25 billion)
This totals $68 billion

4. Companies will be assessed a tax or fee that will score at $12 billion. There was no agreement as to how or on what this tax/fee will be based.

Total: $80 billion

In exchange for these items, the White House agreed to:

1. Oppose importation

2. Oppose rebates in Medicare Part D

3. Oppose repeal of non-interference

4. Oppose opening Medicare Part B

"Non-interference" is the industry term for the status quo, in which government-driven price negotiations are barred. In other words, the government is "interfering" in the market if it negotiates lower prices. The ban on negotiating was led through Congress in 2003 by then-Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who is now the head of PhRMA.

The rebates reference is to Medicare overpayments Big Pharma managed to wrangle from the Republican Congress that Democrats are trying to recoup. The House bill would require Big Pharma to return some of that money. The rebate proposal would save $63 billion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The White House, given the chance, declined to tell the Wall Street Journal for a July 17th article that it supported the effort to pursue the rebates.

The Medicare Part B item refers to "infusion drugs," which can be administered at home. If they fall under Part B, Big Pharma gets paid more than under Part D. The agreement would leave infusion drugs in Part B.

In the section on Big Pharma's concessions, "FOBs" refers to follow-on biological drugs. Democrats have pushed to make it easier to allow generic drug makers to produce cheaper versions of such drugs, an effort Big Pharma has resisted. The Senate health committee bill gives drug makers 12 years of market exclusivity, five more than the White House proposed.

PhRMA's Johnson cast doubts on the provenance of the outline. "The memo, as described, is simply not accurate," he said in a statement. "Anyone could have written it. Unless it comes from our board of directors, it's not worth the paper it's written on. Clearly, someone is trying to short circuit our efforts to try and make health care reform a reality this year. That's not going to happen. Too much is at stake for both patients and the U.S. economy. Our new ads supporting health care reform are starting this week, and we are redoubling our efforts to drive awareness of why this issue is so important to America's future."

Johnson added that "no outside lobbyists -- not a single one -- were ever involved in our discussions with the Senate Finance Committee or the White House so someone is blowing smoke."

But the lobbyist who was given the outline defended its authenticity. And although the White House now says that drug price negotiations and reimportation were not actually discussed in the talks with PhRMA, the lobbyist said: "Well, that's bull -- that's baloney. That was part of the deal, for them not to push that."

The new uncertainty surrounding the deal comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly said that her chamber is not bound by any agreement it is not a party to. On July 8th, the day after the Journal reported some elements of the deal, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said in a public speech that his committee would not be tied down by the agreement.

Before recess, he followed through. His committee passed a bill that allowed for re-importation and drug-price negotiations.

In the Senate, Democrats Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Byron Dorgan (N.D.) pressed White House officials at a closed-door meeting last week, asking whether the White House had tied the Senate's hands.

The health care lobbyist said that what deal still exists is uncertain, as a result of House pressure. "Now the White House is backing away from it, as you know, because of pressure from the House, because the House was not a party to the deal," he said. "The Speaker put enormous pressure on the White House, [saying], 'We weren't a party to it and we reserve the right to do whatever we want.' And which they did in the House Energy and Commerce Committee bill, which led the White House to say, 'Well, maybe it's not cast in concrete.'"

Obama is walking a tightrope here. He wants to keep PhRMA from opposing the bill, and benefits by having its support, which now includes a $150 million advertising campaign. That's a fortune in politics -- more than Republican presidential candidate John McCain spent on advertising during his entire campaign -- but it's loose change in the pharmaceutical business.

Opponents of the deal with PhRMA hope that Obama is playing a multilayered game, making a deal in order to keep the drug makers in his camp for now, but planning to double-cross them in the end if he needs to in order to pass his signature initiative.

Big Pharma, however, is still comfortable. "As far as the pharmaceutical industry, PhRMA and its member companies, yes, they say a deal is a deal. We'll see what happens," said the health care lobbyist.

Source / Global Research

Thanks to Phil Sigmund / The Rag Blog

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UT Medical Branch Researcher on Take from Pharma?

Republican U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley challenges researcher's connections to Pharma. Photo from RFE/RL.
HHS probes researcher's ties to drugmakers

[Sen.] Grassley claims that [Karen] Wagner got more than $160,000 from GlaxoSmithKline over five years, and she only reported $600 to the university... [while] she was working on a big study of Glaxo's antidepressant Paxil...

By Tracy Staton / May 11, 2009

Yet another academic researcher is under scrutiny, thanks to Sen. Charles Grassley.

The Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General is probing Karen Wagner, a researcher with the University of Texas [UT Medical Branch at Galveston], after the senator raised questions about her acceptance of payments from drugmakers. Had she properly disclosed all her financial connections with pharma? Grassley asked back in September. Then, last Tuesday, Grassley reported Wagner to the IG, the Dallas Morning News reports.

UT officials say Wagner has been under investigation for about two weeks, and that she's continuing to work throughout the probe. UT's Board of Regents has also been notified. "We've taken all reasonable steps and will continue to do so," Vice Chancellor Barry Bergdorf told the News. The fact that Grassley made the report to the inspector general "is probably of concern to Dr. Wagner," he added.

Grassley has put a spotlight on relationships between drugmakers and academia (not to mention drugmakers and doctors, drugmakers and medical societies, drugmakers and [fill in the blank]...). In this case, Grassley claims that Wagner, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at UT Medical Branch in Galveston, got more than $160,000 from GlaxoSmithKline over five years, and she only reported $600 to the university.

Over the same period, she was working on a big study of Glaxo's antidepressant Paxil -- a study that later caught plenty of flak for allegedly accentuating the positive and downplaying risks of suicidal thoughts and behavior.

Source / Fierce Pharma

Also see A UT System researcher's ties to drug firms is questioned / Dallas Morning News / May 9, 2009

Thanks to Duncan Echelson / The Rag Blog

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Medical Ethics : The Campus Invasion of Big Pharma

Graphic by Mike Licht / NotionsCapital
Big Pharma and Medical Ethics

Drug companies are 'funneling money through universities for advertising and trying to disguise it as education.'

Dr. Gerry Lower / The Rag Blog / March 9, 2009

The New York Times reports that "In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who was concerned about side effects."

Zerden did a bit of Google searching online and he began sharing his findings with classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.

David Tian, 24, a first-year Harvard Medical student, said: “Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education. And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes.”

This is the unjustifiable degree to which corporate influence has invaded even our medical schools in the U.S. Zerden’s minor stir four years ago has since grown into a full-blown movement with more than 200 Harvard Medical School students and sympathetic faculty, "intent on exposing and curtailing the industry influence in their classrooms and laboratories.”

Big Pharma does not have a very good reputation in testing new drugs for safety and it has no interest in and does not do a very good job of assessing relative efficacy, i.e., CER, comparative effectiveness research), mostly out of fear of losing market share.

As argued in Newsweek, "doctors have long resisted having science guide their practice. That's obvious from the disparity in clinical practices from one region of the U.S. to another."

One solution?

"An unbiased source of data, not drug companies, could really help us in primary care. There have to be allowances for individual differences, but you need standards."

No kidding.

In dealing with this extraordinary lapse in medical ethics, one approach is to deal with the symptoms of the problem, e.g., pass laws forbidding contributions from Big Pharma to medical school faculty members so as to curtail the conflicts of interest that would not exist without Big Pharma.

Consider that drug companies are "funneling money through universities for advertising and trying to disguise it as education. For example, from 2002 until 2008, Wyeth funded an online course promoting hormone therapy at the University of Wisconsin. Thousands of physicians took the course, backed by a $12 million grant.

The course "touted the benefits of hormone therapy and downplayed its risk" in a program described as "pure, undisguised marketing." The increased risks we are talking about here are an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots.

Even the director of the course, on the take to Wyeth, admitted that the hormone material was "presented in a more positive light" than she would have preferred. But, what the hell is one supposed to do?

Dealing with symptoms, of course, has never cured anything, providing only relief at best, because we need to be dealing with the cause of the symptoms. In getting to the core of this problem in medical ethics, it must be pointed out that this scenario did not "just happen." It was overtly promoted under the dominion of greed-driven capitalism.

It is not individuals who are unethical by nature, it is the entire capitalist socioeconomic system that is unethical by design, as well as being immoral on the international front (e.g., the Bush administration's preemptive attack on Iraq). It is best all left behind.

The fact that right wing Roman politics have been "voted to the edge of political irrelevance,” must be taken into consideration here as well. If the Republican Party fails utterly, as it seems destined to do under the "leadership" of Rush Limbaugh, the world will have to fill the void with human rights and democracy. That would be our only chance to get medicine back into the hands of physicians and government back into the hands of the People.

"Physician, Heal Thyself."

Please see the following references for this story:

• Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary by Duff Wilson / The New York Times / March 3, 2009
• Harvard Med Students Expose Big Pharma's Influence on Campus by AlterNet Staff / AlterNet, March 6, 2009
• Why Doctors Hate Science by Sharon Begley / Newweek / March 9, 2009
• Wyeth Funded Med School Course Promoting Risky Drugs by Alexandra Andrews / AlterNet / Feb. 23, 2009
• GOP at the Abyss by Michael Gerson / Washington Post / March 6, 2009

The Rag Blog

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Dr. Stephen R. Keister : John Ruskin, Big PhARMA and the Big Lie

"The essence of lying is deception..." John Ruskin -- British socioligist, author, artist and art critic -- in old age, 1894. Photo by Frederick Hollyer / public domain.

PhARMA and the insurance industry do not want to see a government-sponsored health plan such as HR 676, or the Obama plan, for that would do away with their obscene profits and provide the citizens of the United States with care comparable to other industrialized nations.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2009

In 1872 John Ruskin wrote: "The essence of lying is deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent of a syllable, by a glance of the eyes attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence; and by all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded.”

Campaign for America’s Future has called it to our attention that the drug industry is gearing up to fight health care reform again. Its lobbying arm PhARMA has launched a multimillion dollar PR campaign to protect their excessive profits; hence, keep John Ruskin's words in mind as you watch TV and the approaching inauguration. The propaganda will be with you day after day, and as with good propaganda much will appear credible. Already TV is running and re-running an ad regarding "Quality Affordable Healthcare." Among the sponsors are PhARMA and the American Medical Association, which for many years has been subservient to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Of course, the pharmaceutical industry wishes to maintain its profits as those in the U.S. pay twice as much for 30 commonly prescribed medications as they would pay in any other industrialized nation.

Drug companies are the third most profitable industry in the United States. In 2007 the top 12 drug makers had combined profits of $78.6 billion. In 2004 the drug companies spent, on average, 32% of their income on marketing and 14% on research. Remember, PhARMA tells you that drugs cost so much because of research costs, while that research is done largely by the NIH, the National Cancer Institute and academic researchers. Remember as well, as you see an endless number of ads for pharmaceuticals on TV, that these ads are costing billions a year, which you pay for when you get your prescriptions filled. Only five out of the 21 most influential drugs produced between 1965 and 1992 were developed entirely by the pharmaceutical companies.

PhARMA and the insurance industry do not want to see a government-sponsored health plan such as HR 676, or the Obama plan, for that would do away with their obscene profits and provide the citizens of the United States with care comparable to other industrialized nations. Further, as in Europe, Canada and Australia, you will have free choice of doctor, specialist and hospital. The propaganda will tell you otherwise but it will be an out and out falsehood: a lie that these folks have been peddling since the Carter administration when they tried to defeat the enactment of Medicare. You will be told that price control of pharmaceuticals will diminish research, but do not believe it. You will be told that it is hazardous to take medications from Canada, the UK, etc, but once again that is trash talk, since most all of the pharmaceutical companies are multinationals that produce drugs all over the world at the present time. Very likely your migraine medication comes from Switzerland, your insulin from Sweden, and your flu vaccine from France.

Why is it necessary to have the endless TV commercials for prescription drugs, when we are only one of two nations in the world that permits such cupidity? The other nation is New Zealand. I assume that the drug companies anticipate that the naive TV watchers will see their physicians and ask for that drug and that the physician will accede to their requests. My advice should this occur is to change physicians since your current one has not been keeping up with reading his journals and attending seminars to receive first hand information as to what medication to use in a specific situation.

Again, in watching TV, which I assure the reader that I do as little as possible save for the evening MSNBC news and The Steeler football games, I am dumbfounded by the amount of advertising done by hospitals. After all, when we are hospitalized we go into the hospital where our attending physician is on staff; hence, what is the point of spending thousands of dollars espousing this or that hospital and merely running up patient costs to pay for TV advertising? And many of these hospitals are "non-profit" institutions.

The Progress Report of Jan. 12 reports that, in a series of memos to The Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank, Karen Ignani, the CEO of American Health Insurance Plans, has charged that a public plan would drive up health care costs and increase premiums for those already with health insurance. Poppycock! The health insurance industry also makes the claim that deregulation of the industry would reduce costs. More marketplace economics such as those that produced the present worldwide economic collapse. And these idiots want the American public to believe this. Remember the old rhyme, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me".

One hopes that, under the auspices of ex-Senator Tom Daschle, the Obama administration will be off and running either with HR 676 or the Obama "Medicare For All” plan I note that Focus on The Family and such folks are unhappy with Daschle; that is surely a high recommendation for him and the likelihood of his producing a good program for the nation.

After my retirement in 1990 after 40 years of practice I worked part time at the outpatient clinic of the local V.A. hospital. This was prior to the Bush years, the decreased funding, and the neglect of the V.A. system. I found the hospital well run, the personnel first rate, and the pricing of the pharmaceuticals quite within reason due to negotiated buying by the V.A. system. Our veterans have been short changed by the Republican administration and the Republicans in the Senate; hence, as part of a workable national health care program, the V.A. must be reorganized, made more efficient, and the endless paper work eliminated so our returning servicemen can get care pronto rather than weeks or months later. According to the McClatchy Washington bureau, Jan. 9, 2009, Congress passed almost every bill to benefit the V.A. over President Bush's vetoes. We currently have 84,000 veterans suffering from PTSD and only 42,000 have managed to have their claims approved by the V.A.

In dealing with the overall subject of health care we must do something about child poverty. I am grateful to The House of Representatives for passing the CHIP Act with the assurance that the Senate will follow suit and that President Obama will sign the bill.

However, Education Week on Jan. 7, 2009, published an article linking the diminished cognition of poor children to poverty per se. The United States ranks among the worst nations regarding child poverty, exceeded only by Mexico. We must do something about this for the sake of the children and for the sake of the nation.

Happily the chorus grows. Progressives for Obama has announced a second national call-in day to support HR 676 on Thursday, January 15. This is sponsored by Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care (LCGHC) which includes Physicians For A National Health Program , Progressive Democrats of America and The California Nurses Association. The Nation magazine finally has, in a Dec. 14, 2009 article by John Nichols, come down in support of HR 676, noting that if passed in could create 2,613,459 new jobs, boost the economy by $317 billion, add $100 billion to employee compensation, and infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues.

Finally I am in possession of an article by Janet Gilles, forwarded to me by Dorinda Moreno, appearing in The Rag Blog on Jan. 14, 2009,entitled Low Hanging Fruit for the Progressive Movement, which is worthy of all our readers attention. I wish to thank Ms, Moreno for her undying concern for passage of single payer, universal health care.

I have grown a tad more optimistic that this fight can be won, and at the age of 87, I need quick action! Please, before you get in touch with your elected representative, check Open Secrets.org and check out his/her contributions from PhARMA or the insurance companies, and do not be fearful of letting him/her know that this information is available to all. Our adversaries who would deny our citizens decent health care in order to maintain their executive and stockholder profits, are not adverse to twisting a few arms. It is time to fight fire with fire.

Hopefully, with concerted, dedicated effort, the time is at hand.

Let us try like Hell.

The Rag Blog

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American Health Care : A Sucker Born Every Minute

Grand huckster P. T. Barnum: "A sucker born every minute."

'The insurance industry and PhARMA are well aware of the TV watcher's predilection to accept, without question, their lies, distortions, and innuendoes about the nature of and need for single payer, universal health care.'

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2008

P.T. Barnum's famous statement plays well today, "There is a sucker born every minute.” In some yet undetermined way Barnum must have anticipated the age of television and the fact that for some obscure reason the average American feels that what he sees on television must be true. Therein we who favor single payer, universal health care face one of our two greatest problems. The insurance industry and PhARMA are well aware of the TV watcher's predilection to accept, without question, their lies, distortions, and innuendoes about the nature of and need for single payer, universal health care and by deceit invade the psyche of the boob glued to the tube and convince him that his best interest is served only by a greedy, capitalistic group of corporations, thus, depriving him of his right to health care for him and his family.

The United States is one of two industrialized nations that permit advertising of prescription medication on TV. I recently noted that the various drug companies, in one year, spent half a billion dollars on sleep problems, and the medicines to correct them. Watching TV for an evening one can only imagine the cost to the pharmaceutical industry, as every other ad seems to espouse a different prescription nostrum for ailments real or imagined. One can only surmise the overall cost that, in the long run, will be passed on to the patient at the drug store. What is the purpose? One assumes that the pharmaceutical companies anticipate that the TV watchers will harass their family doctors into giving them “what I saw advertised on TV.” Of course any thoughtful physician will discuss the pros and cons of the request, and then make it very clear that he determines from scientific knowledge what medications he will prescribe, and not be guided by rank commercialism. If he does not do so it is time to suggest a change in physicians.

Excessive pharmaceutical prices are largely indigenous to the United States. On Nov. 21, 2008, in an article posted on TruthOut, an American expatriate in Paris, Steve Weissman, notes his initial experience with the French medical system. He writes.

The system here is surprisingly nonbureaucratic, at least for the patient.. My wife Anna and I picked our own general practitioners, specialists, and hospital care, with no insurance company restricting us to their list of doctors or hospitals. In fact, we found only two restrictions. The GPs could turn us down if they already had too many patients and they had to be within our geographical area so they would not have to travel too far when making a house call. Thus, under socialized medicine here in France, doctors still make house calls, even here in the boondocks where we live.

For each visit to the GP, we write a check for 22 euros. The system then reimburses us for 70% with a direct deposit to our bank account. For some particularly debilitating conditions the government pays the full 100%. To pay whatever the government doesn't many people have private top-up insurance, which is very reasonably priced. At the pharmacy, we don't pay at all. We simply present our health care cards; the government and top-up insurance then pay the pharmacist directly.

How good is the French medical care? Surveys by the W.H.O. rate the French system the best in the world, and far better than average health care in the United States.”

Again, please note that French TV does not carry pharmaceutical ads. But then the French physician seemingly does not need to be directed by corporate advertising and appears to be much better off for the lack of it. But our TV watchers should be cautioned that the profit making, politician-prostituting drug companies are not serving the viewers’ best interest but, amazingly will be believed by most Americans.

I practiced internal medicine and rheumatology for 40 years, retiring in 1990. Rousseau noted in his writings that we should each experience every situation presented to us as a life experience. In 1989 I received an invitation from a pharmaceutical company to attend a three day seminar at a luxury hotel in Phoenix, air-fare paid, with a "companion of my choice.” For 39 years I had never replied to such an invitation, but decided that it was my last chance for such an experience. Hence, I showed the invitation to my wife, and the “companion issue” was quickly answered. We flew from Erie, Pa. to Phoenix, were provided with a $500 a day room, meals, picnics, entertainment, and were required for three days to attend a three hour morning seminar. There were 200 physicians and "companions" in attendance, all with expenses paid. (At the first dinner I noted to my wife that a great number of physicians had brought their daughters, and she noted that I was extremely naïve.) In any event, after 24 hours I was educated about and ashamed by what was being done by the pharmaceutical companies in offering baksheesh to the medical profession. I gained an insight into the high price of drugs to the consumer.

There are many reasons for the high price of prescriptions in this country. Do not blame the pharmacist. There has been collusion between the Bush administration and big PhARMA, as well as the insurance industry. The Medicare Part D "prescription plan" is the outstanding example. This insult to the intelligence of the American public was passed by a whip-sawed congress in the middle of the night by 2-3 votes. The congressional sponsors, by and large, have been employed by the pharmaceutical industry since the bill’s passage. In return a grossly imperfect "prescription plan" with payments in the billions out of the Medicare Fund being made to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for “administering” the plan, and with minimal control of the payment schemes presented to the subscribers. The bill specified prohibiting prescriptions from abroad, deemed price control on drugs as with the VA system out of bounds, and specified that there be no negotiations by Medicare on drug prices with the carriers. One prominent insurance company, which is also in the hospital business, has surreptitiously used the prescription drug plan as a vehicle for pedaling its HMO

We who are rational, discerning human beings must try our utmost to influence the Obama administration to (1) revise the Medicare part D prescription bill in the interest of the consumer rather than the corporations; (2) legislate against advertising of prescription drugs; and (3) establish hard and fast restrictions on the financial interaction between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical professions, including the ghost writing of professional papers for academic researchers by the pharmaceutical industry.

I have addressed one part of the problem regarding health care for all, but there is another chapter dealing with the distortions by the insurance companies and HMO’s which we will address at a later time. It is only the citizens of this nation, acting collectively, who can bring about change. We must make our voices heard by our elected representatives. And we should check out the contributions those representatives have received from the drug and insurance industries on any of several available web sites like OpenSecrets.org.

The Rag Blog

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Fatty Foods : All the Skinny

'Obesity, though some would prefer to call it eating disorders, is a big growth area, not just for the unwitting sufferers, but also for some food companies which contribute so greatly to the problem.'
By Asinus Asinum Fricat / November 18, 2008

A couple of days ago I wrote this diary and copped quite a few unkind comments, mostly from misinformed posters and a handful of hardcore denialists. Yet the problems persist, and shooting the messenger rarely helps. But I'm a tough cookie, comfortable in the knowledge of what I know and write about and in this diary I'm basically tackling the same issues albeit from a different angle: "Big Pharma" and the multinational junk & processed foods companies ("Big Food") which, worldwide, make gigantic profits on the back of unsuspecting consumers, specifically marketing non-nutritious food appealing to children and adults alike via disingenuous advertising.

Obesity, though some would prefer to call it eating disorders, is a big growth area, not just for the unwitting sufferers, but also for some food companies which contribute so greatly to the problem. "Big Pharma" which works in tandem with "Big Food" would love to "terminate" its main source of competition: the natural products industry and the organic movement.

First let me remind you that Barack Obama's election means that it is Big Pharma that stands to take a hit, according to The Boston Consulting Group. Its analysis concludes that Obama's plan to let the federal government negotiate Medicare drug prices could cut industry revenues by a whopping $10 billion to $30 billion. That's good news for those suffering from a plethora of illnesses. I'm not sure how his administration will handle Big Food but one thing is certain: like the banks it badly needs to get regulated particularly in the area of food additives, supersaturated produce with empty calories in the form of white flour, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, transgenic (synthetic) fats, labeling and unscrupulously aggressive marketing.

There are over 320,000 food items on the market, and many food companies produce both "good" and "bad" food. If you thought that the following "modern" foods were harmless, think again: juices, yogurts, cheese sticks, corn flakes, pastries, chocolate & energy bars are all loaded with sweeteners and additives.

Soft drinks: (get rid of them) research indicates that if you drink as little as 2 sodas or colas a day, it promotes diabetes and weight gain. Informed nutritionists have known this for years, which is that taking in empty calories from sugar and high fructose corn syrup is not only wasteful, but can be harmful to the digestive system. HFCS is also found in condiments like ketchup, fruit juices and chocolate bars.

The dangers of hydrogenated oils and partially hydrogenated oils are also developed from otherwise harmless, natural elements. To make them hydrogenated, oils are heated in the presence of hydrogen and metal catalysts. This process helps prolong shelf life but simultaneously creates transfats, which only have to be disclosed on the label if the food contains more than 0.5 grams per serving. To avoid listing transfats, or to claim "transfat free" on their label, sneaky food manufacturers simply adjust the serving size until the transfat content falls under 0.5 grams per serving. Voila! The Harvard School of Public Health has estimated that at least 30,000 people, and more probably 100,000 people die every year in the US from cardiovascular disease caused by consuming hydrogenated oils, as opposed to natural vegetable oil.

Remember when some physicians told you about this new wonder drugs that can take off weight without even thinking? One such drug is Sanofi-Aventis' (SNY) rimonabant, which is marketed as Acomplia in the EU. No such "luck" in the US though, it was rightly rejected for its suicidal tendencies. The medicine supposedly suppresses the receptors in the brain that cause people to crave fatty foods. The other drug is GlaxoSmithkline's (GSK) Alli, which is now available over the counter.

Alli is essentially the over-the-counter version of Xenical, (generic name is orlistat) a prescription medicine already available. Xenical works by blocking the amount of fat absorbed through the digestive system.

At the time of the Alli's launch last year, GSK estimated it would eventually sell between five million and six million kits annually, translating to at least $1.5 billion in annual retail. A 60-capsule kit costs about $50 while a 90-capsule pack costs about $60. Does it work? Not enough to spark a run on Brazilian bikini but if you agree to a commitment to living your life in a new way as you must learn to change your eating and activity habits, then it's for you. But why spend that kind of money when you have to completely change your lifestyle and do all the proverbial heavy lifting? Those taking Alli, btw, have to put up with some diarrhea and flatulence.

And now on the legal front: on 17 April 2008, GSK, along with the American Dietetic Association and the Obesity Society (both regarded by many as fronts for the Big Pharma) petitioned the FDA to try to prevent any dietary supplement product making weight loss claims. The company wants weight loss claims to be re-classified as disease claims, therefore making them the sole domain of treatments with licensed pharmaceuticals. And since GSK's Alli product is the only weight loss drug that is on the over-the-counter market it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see their reasoning.

A lawsuit aimed at getting soft drinks firms out of US schools on obesity grounds is now ready to go, says one of the leading lawyers involved to BeverageDaily.com, as new research suggests obesity litigation will become the next "tobacco".

When it comes to using litigation as a strategy to combat obesity, food manufacturers should be most wary of lawsuits based on consumer protection acts, according to a new report that examines the application of tobacco litigation methods to obesity lawsuits.

The report uses the history of tobacco litigation as a model to evaluate potential legislation against the food industry, which the authors claim is another industry that poses a threat to public health.

Published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study says

that although national legislation against the food industry would be a "preferable" strategy to protect public health, lessons from the tobacco wars suggest that effective national legislation is currently unlikely.

One of the reasons for this is that the industry has a strong influence on the process, say authors Jess Alderman and Richard Daynard. Like tobacco, the food industry routinely- and often invisibly- seeks to influence both legislators and health professionals to support its agenda while ignoring its potential impact on public health".

And when it comes to individual personal injury lawsuits against food companies, these also could carry a slim chance of success, although the companies involved are likely to fight litigation at every step.

"Losing such a lawsuit could open the floodgates of litigation by encouraging millions of obese Americans to file similar cases, so it would be advantageous for the food industry to delay or defend every such lawsuit to the fullest extent."

However, as was demonstrated in the EU recently, lawsuits based on consumer protection acts are likely to be much more effective, as these avoid complicated causation issues and focus instead on deceptive marketing tactics and could fall under consumer protection statutes, together with false advertising, misleading claims and unfairly taking advantage of vulnerable consumers.

Indeed, back in 2005 an American consumer launched a lawsuit aimed at food companies including Kraft Foods, General Mills and Kellogg, alleging that "low sugar" labels on cereals were deceptive as the companies replace the sugar with other carbohydrates, thus offering no significant nutritional advantage. The suit claims that these cereals are misleading because they aren't any healthier than cereals with regular levels of sugar, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The food industry in general is coming under increasing pressure from food lobby groups and some parents, to "clean up its act" and offer healthier alternatives to help combat the obesity epidemic facing the world. Sugary cereals are frequently cited by these groups as guilty culprits, encouraging children to eat empty calories instead of nutritional whole foods. Will Obama appoint a food "czar", someone who can and will take on Big Food?

High fruit and vegetable prices may be linked to childhood obesity, says the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), although it suggests that further research is needed in order to confirm the "casual relationship" identified by its recent study.

The USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) findings are based on an examination of the diets and weight of around 7,000 children between kindergarten and third grade.

"Children who lived in metropolitan areas where fruits and vegetables were relatively expensive gained significantly more weight than children who lived where fruit and vegetables were cheaper," said the USDA, adding that the children who participated in the study had a similar way and standard of living

Data from the Bureau of Labor cites that both American children and parents are spending increased time commuting from work, school and activities. Eating takes place en route from one venue or another, making sitting down to a home-cooked, carefully balanced meal even less of a reality for families. The absence of regulated family eating schedules was cited as one of the main causes of poor dietary habits. But other major concerns cited by respondents should serve as a warning to food makers that they are not about to be let off the hook just yet.

"Children's eating habits are suffering due to the lack of structured meal time, and this is as big a challenge as the lack of balanced meals," said Amanda Archibald, analyst and registered dietitian for Mintel. "Compressed schedules and cramped time availability for both children and parents may play a more important role than previously thought in making healthy food choices."

According to Mintel's Menu Insights, a menu-tracking system, more than 47 percent of children's menu items were fried. Chicken fingers led the way on the top 5 children's menu dishes list, followed by grilled cheese sandwiches, burgers, macaroni and cheese, and hot dogs.

Mintel's report also cites that overall restaurant portions have also steadily increased over time.

And recently, a number of academic studies presented at the AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research reveal growing evidence that overall cancer incidence and mortality resulting from overweight and obesity is also increasing, something which places more pressure on the food industry, and presents regulators with another headache.

If you'd like to read about Big Pharma cloak & dagger scare tactics, look no further than here.

Source / La Vida Locavore

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Big Pharma and Your Pocketbook : Big Hurt

'In no other civilized nation, would you, as a sufferer from an illness, have the opportunity to subsidize one of the three most profitable industries in the world.'
By Dr. S.R. Keister / The Rag Blog / October 17, 2008

A special salute to those of you who have the privilege of going to the drug store to have your prescription(s) filled before the election. You are the select, the chosen, who as American citizens have been granted the right to pay the highest prices in the world for your prescription medicines. In no other civilized nation, would you, as a sufferer from an illness, have the opportunity to subsidize one of the three most profitable industries in the world, contribute to the excessive CEO salaries, pay in part the salaries of the hundreds of lobbyists in Washington as they pay baksheesh to many, many congressmen, by-in-large Republican, who work so hard for the pharmaceutical industry.

We as Americans are indeed the select who, by our purchase of pharmaceuticals, pay for the never ending stream of TV commercials, magazine ads, and newspaper ads for medications about which your physician should be familiar without the vulgar publicity. In spite of the propaganda from the pharmaceutical industry regarding "research costs" the industry spends much more on advertising and lobbying than on "research" I would call your attention to the book: The Truth About The Drug Companies by Marcia Angel, M.D.; Random House, Published 2004.

It should be noted that the United States and New Zealand are the only nations in the world that permit TV advertising for prescription medications. In no other nation does one have to sit with an eight-year old grandchild watching a sporting event and parry his questions during Viagra or Cialis ads about what an erection is, or what is better sex? Where are the hypocrites that cry out about sex education in school when there are ongoing ads on TV that tell one to see their doctor if "the erection" lasts more than four hours? I have heard nothing from these God fearing folks about sex education on TV! Remember what Dante wrote about the fate of the hypocrite?

In no other Western nation, nor in the V.A. facilities in the United States, are the ill taken advantage of as we see in the USA. In the European nations, in Canada, Australia, Japan, there is, under their national health plans, regulation of pharmaceutical prices, prohibiting excessive profits to the manufacturers. In the United States we have no price controls. Indeed the Republican Party, President Bush, and Senator McCain have bitterly opposed any price controls, and in fact have encouraged just the opposite in passing "Medicare Part D" several years ago, thus, scamming the elderly even more to the benefit of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The monstrous "plan," passed by the House of Representatives in the middle of the night, awarded billions of Medicare dollars to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for their "participation,” and further provided for the insurance companies as carriers of the individual policies, resulting in a charge to the participating patient of somewhere around $30 per month for the privilege of “belonging.” This could have been managed by the present Medicare agency, with upgrading, and modification, without involving the insurance industry; however, the Bush/McCain/Republican beholding to the pharmaceutical and insurance industry trumped the interest of the citizen.

It should be noted that many of the Republican leaders in congress responsible for the Medicare Part D bill subsequently ended up working for various pharmaceutical companies or lobbying firms. And, these same folks who pushed the Medicare D Legislation forbid price negotiations by Medicare for price control, and also forbid getting medications from abroad at a more reasonable price. The "reason" for the latter was the administration’s concern that drugs from abroad might be dangerous or inferior. Of course this was pure poppy-cock; of the six or eight major pharmaceutical firms, several are multinationals with offices not only on the United States, but in Switzerland, France, Germany or Sweden. The products they sell in the United States could be made anywhere in the world. Recall several years ago the British subsidiary of one drug company found its flu vaccine supply contaminated and the U.S. government obtained the vaccine from a French subsidiary in the United States. At the same time there was a great concern about bird flu and the government stockpiled TamiFlu made in Switzerland. Happily, in many instances we are able to obtain medications from abroad. For instance, my medication for prostatic cancer costs $400 for 30 tablets in the United States. I can obtain it from Canada at 100 Tablets for $400.

A word about generic drugs. Under U.S. patent laws a drug company looses exclusive patent rights to a specific drug after 17 years, and then theoretically a generic manufacturer can produce the same medication under its chemical name, rather than the original vendor’s trade name. Generics are just as good, and just as safe, as the drug under the original brand name when given Food and Drug Administration approval. Yet the big drug companies can delay that change for some years by various spurious legal actions, thus maintaining the higher prices the consumer must pay. Another ploy is to permit the original drug to become generic, but change the chemical formula a bit and market a "new and better" version of the old drug. As a result of the companies’ huge advertising budgets, the lay public will buy into this nonsense. If you are wise stay with the original in generic form if it is doing the job.

I note that Sen. Obama favors changes in the present consumer punitive system, while his sloganeering opponent, with ruffles and flourishes, suggests he’d bring more of the same. Please note that currently under Medicare Part D, the insurance carriers in many instances are increasing monthly membership rates, increasing co-payments, and decreasing the choice of medications available, while the pharmaceutical manufacturers are increasing prices. A word of caution: your local pharmacist is not responsible for the high price of drugs. He is trapped in the same situation as your local gas station owner. Do not blame the messenger.

This becomes a more and more vital issue in today’s economic meltdown. I sincerely fear that relief may be some time away regardless of who wins the election since problems beyond belief will face the next president. I sincerely believe that Sen. Obama will diligently try to correct a situation that he had no hand in creating, a situation that goes back to the Reagan administration and the concept of "trickle down" economics for which Sen. McCain has been a great supporter, regardless of his politically motivated attempts to publically disengage from what he has helped to create. I note that the U.S. Treasury Department managed to provide the figures for the increase in next year’s social security payments before the November election. A good increase, a necessary increase, but an increase that seems a bit disingenuous in view of the impending decreased taxes available to the U.S. Treasury with the increasing unemployment.

For those with further interest in the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry I suggest the following reading; Critical Condition, Bartlett & Steele, Doubleday, Published 2004 and Health Care Meltdown, Bob Lebow M.D., J.R.I. Press, Boise ID 83703, Published 2002, or indeed my own personal ranting here. Click on position papers.

[Dr Keister is a retired physician who contributes regularly to The Rag Blog.]

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