There are two recent books that expose the unsalutary practices of the drug industry. One is "Our Daily Meds," by Melody Peterson (left) and the other is "The Truth About the Drug Companies," by Marcia Angell (below). A recent study found that half the Americans that have health insurance are on some kind of prescription drug! Ever since drug advertising became legal in the US in 1997 (one of two nations in the world that allow it), the drug industry has beaten a drum to the tune that there is a prescription drug for every malady perceived or otherwise that will take care of the problem. They have even created diseases for which there was no prior awareness.
USA Today on Tuesday examined the "political clout of the pharmaceutical industry," which since 1998 has spent $758 million on lobbying efforts -- more than any other industry, according to the... Center for Public Integrity. The pharmaceutical industry in 2003 spent $143 million on lobbying activities. At that time, there were 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. -- more than two for every member of Congress, USA Today reports. Of those, 476 were former federal officials, including 40 former members of Congress. Former Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) earlier this year was named CEO and president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. According to USA Today, Tauzin's move to the private sector is "testament to the industry's power." Prior to taking his position with PhRMA, Tauzin helped pass the Medicare prescription drug benefit as chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Currently, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) -- the "gatekeeper for legislation that comes to the Senate floor" -- is a "key lobbying target" for the industry, USA Today reports. During the 2004 election cycle, the drug industry contributed at least $17 million to federal candidates, including $1 million to President Bush and $500,000 to former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass).
The pharmaceutical industry would have you believe that they need to charge such high prices for their wares so that they can do research to come up with more and better drugs. In point of fact their research budgets are meager compared to their outlays for advertising, lobbying and executive compensation packages. They've found that a "me too" drug can make them more money than a drug that they've developed from scratch. A "me too" drug is one that they've copied from a success by another drug company, but offers nothing new or original. As for research, they won't hesitate to put a drug on the market whose negative side effects almost outweigh the positive effects of the drug, and those positive effects may be little more than a placebo. As a result, US citizens are loading up on drugs in their systems which may be doing them more harm than good.
Doctors are totally in bed with the drug industry which offers them all kinds of money and perks to go along with the program. The drug industry will even ghostwrite the research papers for them (as well as the congressional legislation) and see that they are published in what used to be independent, unbiased journals. All the doctor need do is put his name on it. (All Congress need do is pass the legislation.)
The newer and scarier material in “Our Daily Meds” concerns the increasingly serious consequences of Americans’ dependency on prescription drugs. Disagreeing with Iowa’s nosologist, Ms. Petersen says the lethal consequences of overprescribed or misprescribed drugs are too readily accepted as “natural” death. She cites the unwillingness of pathologists to question the wisdom with which doctors dispense medications. The reluctance of hospitals to perform autopsies, she says, has impeded medical research into what these interactions can do.
So the accumulation of drugs is a person's system and the encouragement by the drug companies to increasingly rely on pills to cure every perceived pain or ailment goes hand in hand with the public's laziness and unwillingness to take responsibility for their own lives and to seek a panacea by altering their lifestyles - in particular diet and exercise. Dieting and excercise require work and a willingness to undergo pain and discomfort. Instead why not avoid the pain and discomfort by taking a pill? And if a particular drug does not solve the problem ... ? Not to worry, the doctor will simply prescribe another drug. If that one doesn't work, then another and another... In this way the profits are multiplied. So a failure is actually a success ... in terms of profits.
But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.
Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called "me-too" drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first.
Not only that but when a study shows that a drug such as Vioxx causes more harm than good or has disastrous side effects, the FDA allows them to keep it on the market, to keep selling it and to keep endangering peoples' lives. A conclusive study found that Vioxx was causing heart attacks and strokes, but it's still being sold as well as other drugs which have been found to be harmful.
The moral is profits first, human lives second and our government is in the pockets of the drug lobby.
