Medicine Money; a Prescription for Legal Bribery

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to appropriately protect the public from the harmful, and sometimes fatal, side effects of medications; including addiction and psychotic episodes. There are many combinations of explanations. One problem that rightfully draws regular criticism is the FDA’s seemingly comfy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry whose outrageous investments in Washington continue to pay off. With what is a never ending series of favorable laws on Capitol Hill, they rake in tens of billions of dollars in additional profits at our expense.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, prescription drugs are the second most abused drug in the nation; second only to Marijuana. But, the problem isn’t that we abuse drugs. The problem is the drug makers and Washington DC are abusing us with their drugs.

The following drug categories are just some that are known to cause psychotic symptoms:

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• Amphetamine-like drugs
• Anabolic steroids
• ACE inhibitors,
• Antidepressants
• Antiepileptics
• Barbiturates
• Benzodiazepines
• Beta blockers
• Opioids
• SSRIs
• Statins, and more.

Are they making us crazy on purpose?

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The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRma) trade association represents the majority of large pharmaceutical companies. They are notoriously one of the largest and most effective lobbying organizations in Washington. PhRMA and Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), lobbied on at least 1,600 pieces of legislation between 1998 and 2004 alone. You can only imagine what that number is today. Every American should be paying close attention otherwise we allow them to keep us co-dependent co-conspirators by our own complacency and/or lack of education on the issue.

PhRma’s broad reach into government is rooted in its utter dependence on federal decision making. Without the government they have nothing but a laboratory full of chemicals without a legitimate way to pass them off to the public. It is the government that legitimizes them and determines which products drug companies can market, how they can be marketed, and how each drug is to be labeled. For that reason, the industry pumps overflowing pools of money into political campaigns, including those at the State level. In fact, medicine makers have hired more than 3,000 lobbyists — more than a third of which are  former federal officials, in order to advance their interests before the House, the Senate, the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and any other executive branch office. Representatives from PhRma and Bio industries take the top 20 spots in political spending, buying their influence in D.C.’s “favor factory”.

Why are pharmaceutical companies buying influence in Washington?

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The numbers are staggering and at some point we need to look in the mirror. We are taking more drugs than ever before and the cost of those drugs continues to rise at a colossal  rate. For all of life’s little (and big) problems — according to the pharmaceutical industry, there is a drug available and you should take it. Then — for the side effects of that drug, there’s another drug for you to take and another, and so on.

Did you know that about half of all Americans take one (+) prescription drug(s) a day and a third of us take two or more? 

In 2010 we spent a whopping $307 billion on these drugs with the #2 seller being Abilify (the drug Nexium ranked #1, but only by a slim marginal lead). There were other antipsychotics and antidepressants that made the top 10 as well. Government and big PhRma are getting richer and we are getting sicker.

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Abilify indications for use:

• Use as an add-on treatment (Polypharmacy) to an antidepressant for adults with Major Depressive Disorder who have had an inadequate response to antidepressant therapy
• Treatment of manic or mixed episodes associated with Bipolar I Disorder in adults and in pediatric patients 10 to 17 years of age
• Treatment of Schizophrenia in adults and in adolescents 13 to 17 years of age
• Treatment of irritability associated with Autistic Disorder in pediatric patients 6 to 17 years of age

When it comes to antidepressants and antipsychotics, medications are prescribed without a single biological diagnostic test  given to actually prove illness or chemical imbalance. It’s a guessing game for doctors; from what is wrong with a patient to what to prescribe someone who has been labeled or “diagnosed” with mental illness. For people diagnosed with something categorized as  psychological in nature, most often physicians will prescribe what’s called a  Polypharmacy.

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Polypharmacy is a “cocktail” mix of prescription medications to allegedly build one upon another. For depression and other diagnosis deemed “mental”, this cocktail includes antidepressants and antipsychotics. It may also include mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety medications and sleeping aids. Doctors admittedly have no idea why these types of medications work for mental illness, but still insist that they do as they continue to add to your “cocktail” — that will include at least one, if not more of the drugs that are known to cause psychotic behavior. In addition, no one tells you that the buildup in the human body of these medications is toxic. No one tells you how an average person’s organs are unable to filter and properly expel such amounts of these types of medications; possibly causing you to need even more drugs. No one tells you that mind altering drugs are truly altering our minds, and often not the good way. No one tells you because the profit margins for both real and manufactured sickness is too easy to come by and too lucrative to spill the beans.

Sadly, there will never be real health care reform until American’s realize what is happening and how it’s happening, and then demand accountability

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and measurable change while denying them their profits. But, who can think when they have us on so many drugs?

What’s even more troubling to think about is the negligent dosing of America’s children.

According to Dianne Murphy, M.D. – the director of the FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics,

“Many therapies are developed for adults and then used in children without having been studied in children. Therefore, most marketed products that are mostly used in adults have not been studied in children—even though they may be used by doctors to treat children.”

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According to the Wall Street Journal, by December of 2010 more than a quarter of  the children in the United States were taking at least one chronic prescription medication. Of the top five drugs prescribed to kids across the country, all but one are  mind altering drugs like; antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-hypersensitives and medications to treat ADHD. Sadly polypharmacy is not only on the rise in the way adults are prescribed, but the practice of polypharmacy is growing rapidly across the country in how we dose our children. Remember, this means simultaneous doses of multiple mind altering drugs. Think about it. Mind… Altering… Drugs.

Didn’t we D.A.R.E. to keep our kids off drugs?

The FDA themselves say these medications are not tested on children; they are manufactured for adults, yet are being prescribed to kids by the family physician and other specialists. Trusting parents readily assume and accept that their physician adheres to their oath of  “first do no harm” so they dutifully dose their kids according to the instructions on the label and their doctor’s advice.  Most parents have no idea there have been no tests proving the safety of these drugs for their kids. We just give it to them because our doctors tell us  it’s safe and will help them (us). The adult testing or so-called “clinical studies” done on these drugs  are bought,  managed, and paid for by the drug companies themselves. One must recognize the potential of this conflict of interest.

Unfortunately the news gets worse.

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The government and pharmaceutical companies are not the only ones making a killing. Chances are, your doctor is cashing in too. A new database shows that during just the 2009-2010 period alone seven drug companies paid $282 million to more than 17,000 doctors across the country. The data base is interactive and also allows you, the consumer,  to see where your state’s physicians fall in this participation of what realistically amounts to legal bribery; which is neither ethical nor safe.

Aside from the billions of dollars spent advertising to the public, pharmaceutical reps spend countless hours and dollars wooing your doctor so that he or she will prescribe their brand of drugs over their competitor’s drugs. Most physicians know this to be a huge conflict of interest however, many do not care — just like the politicians, as the statistics have proven. Pharmaceutical reps are in constant contact with your physician offering “gifts”, applied payments and other perks based on their research and investigation into who each doctor is and what they feel it will take to influence them. The laws of advertising and marketing show that relationships do matter and frequency sells. Many physicians have  become pill pushers for big PhRma because they have been sold. Many have because they’ve been hired.

Unbelievably drug companies have not had to report any of these expenditures. The data that has been compiled is based on forced disclosures as a part of settlements and lawsuits. How much more money flowed between doctors and pharmaceutical companies that we do not know about? The wining, dining, schmoozing, and high dollar “gifts” to physicians is par for the course and the above figure does not include actual advertising dollars spent specifically targeting doctors. In 2006 PhRma spent an estimated $16 Billion, that’s an average of $10,000 per physician.

The “Physician Payments Sunshine Act”  is part of the 2012 Health Care Reform Act, and required all drug companies to begin collecting data by January 1, 2012 and report physician payments by this year (2013). That data is not yet available, but one can only assume  the numbers will be astronomical and with murky guidelines the ability to manipulate the information is still in PhRma’s hands. We will probably never get a full and honest disclosure.

The FDA regularly passes poison to American’s whereas many other countries have already disallowed several drugs and other dangerous things like genetically modified foods (GMO), Aspartame, and more. In addition, American’s pay 1.7 times to 2.9 times more for the same drugs than they do in any other country. They are stripping away our health and raping our wallets.

Are not the FDA and our family physicians supposed to have our best interest at stake at all times? Maybe they need a reminder of their Hippocrates   Hippocratic Oath.

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* List of School Shootings and the Medications Shooters Took

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