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My statement still stands: Why is every side effect negative?
Well, logically speaking that is a tautology. Side effects are negative because they are by definition not a desired effect of the drug. That does not mean it is harmful, it is just outside the scope of desired effects for treating a condition.
Take Sildenafil. It was developed by Pfizer to treat angina but all the men who took it got unexpected erections. So Pfizer re-marketed it for ED treatment. So, if you are an angina patient, an erection is a side effect as it has nothing to do with angina. If you are an ED patient, it is not a side effect, it is the desired outcome.
My hope for this thread is that, over the next few days, I will follow up on a bunch of the references and logical arguments posted as evidence for a conspiracy, then put together a "top ten" list of what I think constitute the best arguments/evidence for a "big pharma" type of conspiracy. (Perhaps will do something similar?). Hopefully, then, the people who do not believe there is a conspiracy can take a closer look at the evidence and point out the flaws, if they see any.
I'm basically looking for the BEST evidence for conspiracy, and the BEST arguments offered by those who say they see flaws in the aforementioned evidence (and thus remain unconvinced that there is any conspiracy).
I think you will need to be more clear on what constitutes a conspiracy. It seems to me that a conspiracy must include illegal activities. A lot of what is being posted here falls more under plain old capitalism at work. You will be hard pressed to find illegal activities because they will be well hidden from the public for obvious reasons.
You could define a conspiracy as including un-ethical activities but then we are simply shifting the argument to what exactly is ethical within the medical / pharma industry? For instance, is getting the patent on a $1.50 drug and selling it for $150/dose ethical? Pharma says it is because they use the profits to fund research on new drugs, most of which don't pan out. Customers say it isn't because they are getting scalped. We can argue all day which is right. So if you agree with customers' view on ethics, yes there is a conspiracy. If you take pharma's view on ethics, there is no conspiracy.
I think you will need to be more clear on what constitutes a conspiracy. It seems to me that a conspiracy must include illegal activities. A lot of what is being posted here falls more under plain old capitalism at work. You will be hard pressed to find illegal activities because they will be well hidden from the public for obvious reasons.
You could define a conspiracy as including un-ethical activities but then we are simply shifting the argument to what exactly is ethical within the medical / pharma industry? For instance, is getting the patent on a $1.50 drug and selling it for $150/dose ethical? Pharma says it is because they use the profits to fund research on new drugs, most of which don't pan out. Customers say it isn't because they are getting scalped. We can argue all day which is right. So if you agree with customers' view on ethics, yes there is a conspiracy. If you take pharma's view on ethics, there is no conspiracy.
I cannot see a smoking gun emerging from this.
Read:
Financial ties of principal investigators and randomized controlled trial outcomes: cross sectional study
Objective To examine the association between the presence of individual principal investigators’ financial ties to the manufacturer of the study drug and the trial’s outcomes after accounting for source of research funding.
Conclusions Financial ties of principal investigators were independently associated with positive clinical trial results. These findings may be suggestive of bias in the evidence base.
AND
Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher by Gwen Olson, a top sales rep with a 15-year career who left the business because of ethical issues
The evidence is pretty clear. If you choose not to see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
The randomized study is common knowledge and is not necessarily a "conspiracy". The problem of bias that arises from funding of research that will have a material impact on the funder's industry is not unique to drug research. It goes on in climatology, finance, oceanography and fisheries, etc. While some biased research is probably intentional a lot of it is just as likely to be human nature - the desire to not be the bearer of bad news to someone you know (or in this case, is giving you money). That is not good but I am not sure qualifies as a "conspiracy".
As far as Gwen Olson - I have no idea. Every story has two sides to it. Just because someone comes along with a tell-all story does not make it so.
I am not pro-pharma here. But I am very pro-rational thinking and tend to be skeptical of conspiracy theories until I see a smoking gun. I still think that Oswald shot Kennedy. And that OJ did it.
I'm not huge on conspiracy theory stuff, with the exception of two topics: Pharmaceuticals & World Population. They both seem to wind up with the same "common denominators" for whatever reason.
If you don't mind a bit of a queasy feeling you could always "start with the start" of several of the top 10 Pharmaceutical Co's.
Merck, Pfizer & Bayer were "gifted" with their top CEO's following the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. There have been accusations regarding experiments on animals, humans & a cough syrup marketed for children that contained Heroin & remained on the market for 15 years after studies showed concern for it's addictive qualities:
" .... Fritz ter Meer, for example, became Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BAYER. During his interrogation in Nuremberg, he said that the forced laborers in Auschwitz had “not been made to
suffer particularly badly as they were to have been killed anyway.” BAYER even
named a study foundation after him, the "Fritz ter Meer Foundation". ..."
The randomized study is common knowledge and is not necessarily a "conspiracy". The problem of bias that arises from funding of research that will have a material impact on the funder's industry is not unique to drug research. It goes on in climatology, finance, oceanography and fisheries, etc. While some biased research is probably intentional a lot of it is just as likely to be human nature - the desire to not be the bearer of bad news to someone you know (or in this case, is giving you money). That is not good but I am not sure qualifies as a "conspiracy".
As far as Gwen Olson - I have no idea. Every story has two sides to it. Just because someone comes along with a tell-all story does not make it so.
I am not pro-pharma here. But I am very pro-rational thinking and tend to be skeptical of conspiracy theories until I see a smoking gun. I still think that Oswald shot Kennedy. And that OJ did it.
It does when it is backed by another story and another story and another story and contains research done by another researcher and another researcher and another researcher along with corporate and gov't statistics. Smoking gun is the result of RESEARCH and READING and LISTENING and EFFORT and TIME SPENT THINKING and ASSESSING and QUESTIONING.
Posters have given you probably 20 different topics to investigate. None of which is a one-off, with only one source supporting it. There are mountains of research on ALL of it, some going back almost 100 years.
Yet you choose to dismiss them all and say you KNOW for fact there is no connection. So be it.
I think you will need to be more clear on what constitutes a conspiracy. It seems to me that a conspiracy must include illegal activities.
According to most definitions, a conspiracy does not necessarily have to involved illegal acts - just evil, or unethical, or "wrongful" acts, etc.
Quote:
You could define a conspiracy as including un-ethical activities but then we are simply shifting the argument to what exactly is ethical within the medical / pharma industry?
Plenty of examples have already been posted in this thread, but I'd say the general idea comes down to allowing or promoting the suffering of people so that you can make money by selling them meds, etc.
Quote:
For instance, is getting the patent on a $1.50 drug and selling it for $150/dose ethical? Pharma says it is because they use the profits to fund research on new drugs, most of which don't pan out.
If this is truly the reason for a drug being expensive, then ok. But if markets are simply being manipulated so that some people can make outrageous profits, then I'd say it falls under the category of conspiracy (even if the people making the money don't meet secretly in dingy back rooms, etc.)
Posters have given you probably 20 different topics to investigate. None of which is a one-off, with only one source supporting it. There are mountains of research on ALL of it, some going back almost 100 years.
For me to investigate? The onus is on you my friend, to stitch together a narrative that shows a conspiracy. Although I still maintain that someone here needs to define what exactly constitutes a conspiracy.
Random bits of information that while they may show something fishy, do not demonstrate an industry wide conspiracy. It looks more like capitalism at work, for better or worse.
According to most definitions, a conspiracy does not necessarily have to involved illegal acts - just evil, or unethical, or "wrongful" acts, etc.
Plenty of examples have already been posted in this thread, but I'd say the general idea comes down to allowing or promoting the suffering of people so that you can make money by selling them meds, etc. If this is truly the reason for a drug being expensive, then ok. But if markets are simply being manipulated so that some people can make outrageous profits, then I'd say it falls under the category of conspiracy (even if the people making the money don't meet secretly in dingy back rooms, etc.)
Legal conspiracy involves multiple parties, so by extension, I assume you mean multiple pharma companies working together to commit a single crime, or an unethical act.
Take Turing Pharmaceuticals - they did something widely criticized by acquiring the rights to Daraprim and jacking the price way up. It was clearly slimy and unethical but it was not a conspiracy between multiple pharmaceutical companies as far as I know. Martin Shkreli is the one who got blamed for it all.
I would say there is an industry-wide conspiracy in all of the medical industry to make as much money as possible and because of that the limits of ethical business is stretched thinly. This is not unique at all to pharma, it is endemic in the entire medical-industrial complex. Take artificial joints - costs about $20 to make one but the patient gets billed around $15,000 for it. Sounds as bad as jacking up drug costs to me. Bag of saline, which is just water and salt, costs less than $1 to make and a patient is charged $500 or worse.
This stuff is horrible but I don't consider it to be a conspiracy. It just plain old fashioned greed. Is that what you mean by conspiracy - greed?
This all needs to be fixed but labeling it a conspiracy is going to make you sound like the same people who think the CIA assassinated JFK.
To view full DOJ reports click the links. There are SO many more...
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