A new article with title of “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs” is set to be published in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (JLME). The article written by Prof. Donald W. Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan J. Darrow present evidence that about 90% of all new drugs approved by FDA over the last 30 years have little or no advantages compared to the existing drugs.
The article points out how FDA who supposedly must be in charge of public health and safety is nothing more than a puppet ran by giant pharmaceutical and drug companies. The fact is that the medical industry has become a leading cause of death and just in US, annually, 12,000 people die due to unnecessary surgeries, 7,000 people die due to medical errors, 20,000 people die due to other errors, 80,000 people die from infections acquired at the hospitals and 106,000 people die from adverse side effect of medications.
According to Harvard report, in US alone, every week, about 53,000 people end up in hospitals and 2400 people die as a result of taking prescription drugs:
The Harvard report points out how one in five drugs approved by FDA seriously harm people and prescription drugs are becoming the 4th leading cause of death. There are also other related issues with drugs such as hospitalizations from over-dosing, errors, or recreational drug use and about 80 million people a year suffer from mild side effects of drugs like insomnia, dizziness, aches and digestive problems.
The forthcoming article in JLME also shows that the pharmaceutical industry makes large contribution to FDA for reviewing its drugs and also contributes large campaign donations to US Congress in order to pass legislation that would benefit the giant Pharmaceuticals. According to the authors “Congress has underfunded FDA enforcement capacities since 1906, and turning to industry-paid “user fees” since 1992 has biased funding to limit the FDA’s ability to protect the public from serious adverse reactions to drugs that have few offsetting advantages”.
Biotech, Pharmaceutical and chemical companies spend more money selling and promoting a product or a drug rather than scientific research and studies about the safety of their products:
With FDA’s incompetence and failure to take a stand and act based on public’s interests and safety, consumers and patients are now turning into innocent victims in mercy of giant biotech, chemical and pharmaceutical companies. In fact, in order to get FDA’s approval and buy public trust, the giant pharmaceuticals fund a team of doctors and researchers to publish a literature in one of the scientific journals to hide the drug’s side effect and overstate its benefits.
On the other hand, FDA who gets paid by giant pharmaceuticals spare no efforts to perform any independent studies of its own and totally relies on the information that’s presented to them by giant pharmaceuticals or biotech companies. Since such corrupted knowledge is approved and regulated by FDA, even sometimes good physicians recommend these toxic drugs or products to their patients.
Giant Pharmaceuticals, biotech (Monsanto and DuPont), and chemical companies (Dow, Bayer, and ExxonMobil) are growing even bigger under the protection of FDA:
According to Harvard article, “The New England Journal of Medicine has published, without comment, proposals by two senior figures from the FDA to loosen criteria drugs that allege to prevent Alzheimer’s disease by treating it at an early stage. First, they use the word “disease” to refer to a hypothetical “early-stage Alzheimer’s disease” that supposedly exists “before the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are apparent.” The proposed looser criteria would legitimate drugs as “safe and effective” that have little or no evidence of being effective and expose millions to risks of harmful side effects”.
How conflict of interest has become a defining problem in the modern science:
Not long ago, Monsanto’s former researcher, Richard Goodman was chosen in position of the associate editor of the journal for biotechnology after the famous Séralini study showed huge tumors in rats as a result of Monsanto’s GM maize and Roundup. The biotech companies have unleashed genetically modified organisms that have been linked to a wide range of diseases including cancer, birth defects, gluten diseases and allergies in our food supply.
Two major GMO labeling movements, both in Washington and California were defeated since the junk food, biotech and chemical companies poured millions of dollars to defeat a label GMO labeling: http://www.seattleorganicrestaurants.com/vegan-whole-food/biotech-chemical-corporations-spent-millions-to-defeat-Washington-GMO-labeling-initiative.php
These days, majority of big donations to our schools and universities come from giant Pharmaceutical, biotech, chemical and oil companies. You would think that at least the academic research are non-biased and natural, considering that our government is deeply in bed with giant oil, drug, biotech, chemical and pharmaceutical companies.
The question is that are we that naive to think that billions of dollars of contributions from these giant companies (who are polluting our food, air and environment), won’t tilt or at least steer the findings of these so-called ‘scientific studies?’
Resources:
http://www.ethics.harvard.edu/lab/blog/312-risky-drugs?layout=default#stay-informed
http://www.ethics.harvard.edu/lab/featured/347-jlmeissue
