Big Pharma Corrupts Our DRs and Govt

Hey guys!

Aside from participating in a conference call without pants today (one of the beauties of telecommuting most days), there hasn’t anything suspicious or odd in my land today. That is until I read the Slate piece titled,”It’s not just for TV quacks: Drug company money is also swirling around NIH, FDA, and possibly your own doctor.” Apparently, the makers of antidepressant drug Wellbutin paid Dr. Drew approx $275 THOUSAND for “services.” He got in trouble, and this whole thing has unfolded, because he made statements about the drugs’ effects that were not approved by the FDA (the dumbass said taking Wellbutin may increase a woman’s orgasms to up to 60 in a day. SMH). He’s also taken $115k from Janssen Pharm, the makers of drugs that address, “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), general medicines (acid reflux disease, infectious diseases), mental health (bipolar I disorder, schizophrenia), neurologics (Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine prevention and treatment), pain management, and women’s health (birth control and bladder health)” (per their website). Well, isn’t that a nice cacophony of drugs.

According to the article, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica collected all of Big Pharma’s mandatory disclosures (12 drug companies + some voluntary) of these types of payments for “services” and the database contains more than $760 million in payments. “Services” includes, “consulting, speaking, and research (It is probable that a large proportion of these gigs are ‘work’ in name only, such as the lavish consulting meetings in Jamaica that the government alleges were intended to reward physicians prescribing large amounts of Wellbutrin to their patients.)”

So clearly it’s not a shocker that celebs take drug deals. Even Paula Deen has. I think what’s so insidious is when the government makes these deals because that will, of course, affect the sort of health “crises” they invent (see “disease mongering“) as well as influence how they spend our tax dollars (funding “anti-obesity programs”). Even ObamaCare is now rigged to fuck with people’s size.

Think about how profit is fueling the CDC’s constructed “obesity epidemic”! Here’s a quote from the article that really got my brain churning:

“Worse yet, you can often catch a whiff of drug company money on the FDA, which decides which pharmaceuticals are allowed on the market, and the NIH [Cranky Note: The NIH is one of the sponsors/funders of The Weight of the Nation!!], which funds some $30 billion of medical research annually. That controversial decision last year to screen children for cholesterol—and potentially put them on cholesterol-lowering drugs? Big Pharma was there.”

It’s not hard to see how insidious this all is. The same doctors who play the “personal responsibility” card with fat patients will also be the first to offer a drug instead of the truth. The truth, however, only serves to profit the individual and that’s the problem in Big Pharma/Gov/Diet Industry’s eyes. If you treat yourself well, focus on healthful behaviors, not weight, and enjoy your life, you’re not going to be a profitable consumer. Worse, if you shift your focus from weight to health you may actually start to realize how the government (and maybe your doctor?) has profit, not your health, as its priority.

<3,

The Cranky One

Tags: big pharma, disease mongering, NIH, obamacare, obesity politics