Note from Health Lover, Ilena Rosenthal.
Thanks to Dr. Mercola ... like myself, long a target of the Quackwatch
/ S****-oil legal and smear assaults. May our Good Lord protect you
and help you spread your message wide & far.
www.BreastimplantAwareness.org/QuackWatchWatch.htm
www.BreastimplantAwareness.org/S****-oil.htm
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/19/shocking-facts-about-the-pharmaceutical-industry.aspx
Big drug companies have been accused of putting profits above
patients, spinning false PR campaigns and more. Here are some of the
most shocking facts about the pharmaceutical industry.
The price of drugs is increasing faster than anything else a patient
pays for: The prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are
routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year. Some medications
have a mark-up of 1,000 percent over the cost of their ingredients.
Your doctor may have an ulterior motive behind your prescription: Drug
reps often give gifts to convince doctors to prescribe the medications
that they represent. These drug reps usually have no medical or
science education.
Pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than research: Almost
twice as much!
Guilty of Medicare fraud: Pharmaceutical companies are being tried in
federal courts as a result of their exploitation of Medicare.
AstraZeneca had to pay more than $340 million in penalties for
coaching doctors to cheat Medicare.
The combined wealth of the top 5 pharmaceutical companies outweigh GNP
of sub-Saharan Africa: In fact, the combined worth of the world’s top
five drug companies is twice the combined GNP of that entire region.
Americans pay more for prescription meds than anyone else in the
world: $200 billion in 2002 alone.
"New" Drugs aren't really new: Two-thirds of “new” prescription drugs
are identical to existing drugs or modified versions of them.
Drug companies are taking advantage of underdeveloped countries to
perform clinical trials: In developing countries, government oversight
is more lax.
For more shocking facts, click the link below.
Sources:
* Nursing Online Education Database March 27, 2008
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* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug
Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure
or prevent any disease.
Click to Continue
Dr. Mercola Dr. Mercola's Comments:
According to Cor****ate Watch, Fortune magazine has declared the
world’s biggest drug company, Pfizer the “fifth-best wealth-creator”
in America.
The question is: who benefits from this “creation of wealth”? It’s
certainly not the Americans who pay a thousand percent markup for the
drugs Pfizer pumps out.
Americans pay far more for their drugs than any other nation. Take
this, for example: according to PricewaterhouseCoopers fascinating
re****t, Pharma 2020: The Vision, India spends $420 per diabetic
patient per year. The U.S., in comparison, spends an average of
$10,844 per year per patient.Their re****t also states:
“The current pharmaceutical industry business model is both
economically unsustainable and operationally incapable of acting
quickly enough to produce the types of innovative treatments demanded
by global markets. In order to make the most of these future growth
op****tunities, the industry must fundamentally change the way it
operates.
Some of the major changes PwC anticipates for the industry are:
* Health care will ****ft in focus from treatment to
prevention.
* Pharmaceutical companies will provide total health care
packages.
* The current linear phase research & development process will
give way to in-life testing and live licensing, in collaboration with
regulators and health care providers.
* The traditional blockbuster sales model will disappear.
* The supply chain function will become revenue generating as
it becomes integral to the health care package and enables access to
new channels.
* More sophisticated direct-to-consumer distribution channels
will diminish the role of wholesalers.
Now, some of this has an encouraging ring to it, such as ****fting the
focus from treatment to prevention. Other “predictions” are far more
menacing, including the development of more sophisticated
direct-to-consumer distribution channels for drugs.
People are Waking Up to the Truth About Health
Fortunately, more people are waking up to the illusion and deception
of the drug industry as a whole, and starting to clearly see the
truth. Last year’s PricewaterhouseCoopers' re****t cited a declining
trust in the reputation of the mega-pharmaceuticals.
The main reason is because the public is absolutely right in their
estimation that drug companies manipulate or suppress negative
clinical trials, promote their toxic products for unapproved uses, and
focus on developing drugs that are no better than older ones.
This is yet another indication that my vision to reconfigure and
reform the deadly state of conventional health care in America is
getting closer to becoming a reality. So keep up the good work folks.
But please be aware, the battle has merely begun… Each of the 25 facts
listed in the article above constitutes a problem within the system
that needs to be changed or abolished.
Physicians must also, en masse, come to the realization that what they
are doing is going nowhere. This may be one of the most difficult
areas to change, as the pharmaceutical industry has devised a highly
effective system of indoctrination and very specific psychological
techniques to bamboozle physicians. Doctors usually believe they are
immune to persuasion tactics, and drug reps know just how im****tant it
is to maintain that illusion – which is why it works so well.
Consider for a moment the in-depth re****t published in both The New
England Journal of Medicine and PLoS Medicine, which admitted that
pharmaceutical sales reps are trained in tactics that are on par with
some of the most potent brainwa****ng techniques used throughout the
world!
The idea that reps provide some kind of valuable, informative service
to physicians is total fiction, created and perpetuated by the drug
industry, to keep this deadly, but profitable, scheme going.
Poison For Profit
Another shocking fact that few consider is that virtually every major
pharmaceutical company has a corresponding branch that creates the
toxins and poisons that contribute to the chronic diseases their drugs
and medical devices treat.
So these huge transnational companies profit not only from the sale of
products such as pesticides, herbicides and GM crops, but also from
the symptoms and chronic illnesses that they can trigger.
The vast majority of chemicals found in pesticides and other products
undergo little or no testing for chronic, low level exposures and for
chronic health effects, effectively creating a circle of destruction
and double profits.
Below is a list of such chem/pharm companies:
Chemical Division
Pharmaceutical Division
Aventis (herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, GM food)
Aventis Pharma
Monsanto (herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, GM food)
Pharmacia
BASF (herbicides, fungicides, pesticides)
BASF Pharmaceuticals
Merck Research Company (precursors for pesticides and neurotoxins)
Merck
Dow Chemical (industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals)
Dow Pharmaceuticals
Make no mistake about it. The drug companies are incredibly powerful,
and overcoming their influence over your life will take a mammoth
effort.
But there are concrete steps you can take to combat the drug
companies' self-interest, save yourself loads of money, and improve
your health so you can avoid unnecessary drugs in the first place.
Ten Steps to Reduce Your Pharmaceutical Expenses Now
Take charge of your own health now instead of handing it over to the
drug companies.
How do you do that?
You can start by using the Internet to locate non-drug alternatives to
your health challenges. Many start with my site as it has more than
150,000 pages to help you understand more about how you can improve
your health without drugs or surgery, through simple lifestyle
modifications.
These are the basic tenets of optimal health that have always remained
permanent truths, regardless of what marvels modern science comes up
with next:
1. Eat a healthy diet that’s right for your nutritional type
(paying very careful attention to keeping your insulin levels down)
2. Drink plenty of clean water
3. Manage your stress
4. Exercise
5. Get plenty of appropriate sun exposure
6. Limit toxin exposure
7. Consume healthy fat
8. Eat plenty of raw food
9. Optimize insulin and leptin levels
10. Get plenty of sleep
If you want to further understand how cor****ations and government
manipulate science and the media by preying upon the public trust --
and how to protect yourself -- I highly recommend the book "Trust Us,
We're Experts."
One of the primary purposes of Mercola.com is to provide you with the
insight to protect and defend yourself from these major cor****ate
interests (as well as the government they've purchased). I’ve
committed myself to providing you with practical and straightforward
advice and suggestions on how to optimize your body to prevent
disease, reach your optimal weight, and live longer.
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