I work in the Pharmaceutical industry and it's become a victim of its own
success. There are many, many miracle medicines out there that save countless
people's lives or make their issues bearable.
There are also too many drugs on the market and far too many sales reps chasing
the same population of docs. Many companies' promotional tactics border on
unethical, or at least deceptive. Also, many of the so-called new products are
simply slight alterations of competitors products designed to split the market
and give everyone a piece of the pie or protect a revenue stream from the
generics. A prime example is Nexium, where AstraZeneca has made billions off a
medicine that is really no better than the previous generation product
Prilosec. I really hate watching those commercials. Also, IMO the next series
of big-time theives are the large biotech companies that have come up with
wonder drugs like Epogen and have manipulated the patent situations and lobbied
to prevent effective generics and stifle competition, while raking in
gazzillions of money.
So the Pharma industry continues it's old tricks, trying everything they can to
maintain the huge margins and keep the wolves at bay. In the meantime, more
and more people get madder and madder.
But even with all this, the drug alternative to treating an aging population is
sky-high hospital stays or death, which nobody really wants. They want a pill
to cure them, and they want it cheap; and they want it to be perfectly safe,
and they don't want to pay for that either.
In the end, I believe that much of the blame lays with 1. A society that has
allowed the big cheimcal and industrial companies to poison the environment,
causing genetic mutatations, which now manifest themselves as cancer and
auto-immune diseases like RA, MS, Lupus, etc.; and 2. Because of modern
medicine, we are just living too long, far past the age many of were
genetically predestined for.
Oh, well, off the soapbox.
Sorry for the tirate. Maybe I'll just take another pill?
Skip
----- Original Message ---------------
Subject: [OM] Re: Thymerosol and autism, was: anything but
From: Earl Dunbar <edunbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 22:27:10 -0400
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
>
>A certain drug (OK, it was Zoloft,) saved my life. Literally. I won't
>go into details, but I was seriously, critically depressed because of a
>WHMNBN, and sitting in my physician's waiting room (my primary care
>physician, who is a saintl,) waiting to see him. Also in the waiting
>room were two pharamceutical representatives who were bad-mouthing
>doctors in general, based on their resistance to BELIEVE everything that
>they, snot-nosed young kids who were simply sales reps, not real, bona
>fide scientists, told them (the docs) to believe. I was SO incensed
>(partly due to my condition, as I was not yet on a proper dose of Zoloft
>to relieve my depression,) that I spoke out and shocked the hell out of
>them. They were real assholes, I kid you not.
>
>That experience told me lots about the =business= of the drug
>companies. Not everything is black and white, and I do not judge the
>entire industry or its personnel. But it IS a business, so caveat emptor.
>
>Earl, now free of clinical depression and not on Zoloft.
>
>Bob Whitmire wrote:
>
>>>>While I'm more than willing to concede that most of the drug industry is
>>>>probably a bunch of bad guys
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>Yeah, they're bad guys all right. Only have saved the lives of about half
>>the effing people on the effing planet. These are genuinely interesting
>>times. The people who do good things are portrayed as bad guys, and the reak
>>kranks who contribute nothing but hot air and recriminations and accusations
>>are somehow the good guys. As my old buddy Nero Wolfe used to say: Pfui!
>>
>>
>
>
>
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