Sunday, March 2, 2014

Unfinished Business (part 6) - Medical Shortages & Big Pharma's Influence in the Medical Field

 1.) Big pharmaceutical companies discontinuing or actively combating generics in order to enhance sales of newer, more expensive, brand-name drugs. Companies discourage sales of their own cheaper brands. For an example, pharmaceuticals “tweak” their drugs slightly to apply for a renewed patent in a process called “ever greening.” 
2.) Prices of generic drugs fixed at prices too low to cover manufacturing costs (e.g., in US Medicare). In June 2012, this cause was endorsed by a report of the US Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and by pharmaceutical lobby groups in Europe.
3.) Pharmacists choosing not to stock cheaper drugs because profit margin is too narrow.
4.) Shortage of substrate (materials to make drugs).
5.) Growing demand for medicines in the Developing World.
6.) Manufacturing or quality control breakdowns within production lines due to lack of investment to improve or maintain standards.
7.) Manufacturing slowdowns characterized as “meaningless red tape” by a report of the US Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in June 2012.
8.) Canada has almost no drug manufacturing industry of its own and is vulnerable to changes elsewhere. Massive layoffs and closures at pharma companies in 2010-12 are said to be owing to the expiration of patents on blockbuster drugs. These changes further distance sites of manufacturing from Canada.
9.) Legislative changes to financing arrangements for generic drugs, for example in Ontario, resulting in declining profitability for pharmacists and manufacturers. Pharmacists decide not to stock the drugs, and manufacturing further declines in response to lower demand.
10.) No Canadian controls require the pharmaceutical industry to warn of shortages in advance, let alone provide the reasons. Notification is voluntary and, so far, incomplete. 

11.) Unethical and anti-trust business practices such as vendor kickbacks or
“pay for delay” schemes that have placed profit above manufacturing standards and patient supplies. 
12.) Effect of large Hospital Group Purchasing Organizations in USA –in effect a “monopsony” (also "monopsomy") -(single buyer, many sellers).  This cause figured in a report of the US Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 15 June 2012. 

13.) Political sanctions in countries
(ex: Iran).
"The vast majority of the published scientific literature on cancer and cancer research is inherently flawed and non-reproducible, reveals a new review published online in the journal Nature. Researchers C. Glenn Begley and Lee Ellis found that a mere 11 percent of 53 papers on cancer published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals was solid, while the other 89 percent could not be reproduced, implying that it may be false or at the very least misleading.

Pre-clinical studies are the basis upon which the scientific community at large determines how best to develop treatments for disease, including potential new approaches to treating cancer. However, such studies, though sure to contain some minor flaws from time to time, appear to be missing the boat in major ways on a regular basis. The end result of this intrinsic failure is a cancer treatment system that is not only outdated but potentially completely misguided.

'The scientific community assumes that the claims in a pre-clinical study can be taken at face value - that although there might be some errors in detail, the main message of the paper can be relied on and the data will, for the most part, stand the test of time," wrote the authors about their findings. "Unfortunately, this is not always the case'.

Based on a review of 53 published papers on cancer, Begley and Ellis discovered that only six of them could be reproduced and confirmed in a clinical setting. The worst part was that the 53 papers were considered to be 'landmark', which means they are generally recognized as having had a significant impact on cancer research due to presenting some new cancer treatment approach or novel therapy for targeting cancer cells.

'It looks like the scientific literature is contaminated with a growing number of tainted studies, which may reach 89 percent, the results of which are not reproducible by any means," writes Eleni Roumeliotou for GreenMedInfo.com about the shocking findings. "This means that to an extent, we have based our healthcare and clinical guidelines on fake studies that reported untruthful results in order to accommodate the interests of industrial corporations'.


Many cancer studies influenced by Big Pharma have conflicts of interest.  “The fact of the matter is that a considerable amount of published scientific research is questionable at best due to influence from the pharmaceutical industry. A similar but unrelated study that looked at research funding found that at least 17 percent of published research papers in general were conducted with serious conflicts of interest, which more often than not stemmed from drug industry funding that steered the research in a pre-determined direction.  'Given the frequency we observed for conflicts of interest and the fact that conflicts were associated with study outcomes, I would suggest that merely disclosing conflicts is probably not enough,' says Dr. Reshma Jagsi, M.D., author of a University of Michigan (UM) study that found a considerable percentage of cancer research to be tainted by conflicts of interest. 'It's becoming increasingly clear that we need to look more at how we can disentangle cancer research from industry ties' ”.

The cure is not profitable, it never was. Patents are (and always will be) more profitable than the cure.  Out of crisis and chaos, creates profit, and opportunism.  Careers and livelihoods stimulate the economy and therefore crises, threats, fears, and dangers will be maintained, manipulated, and allowed to exist so that diseases, sickness, illnesses, injury, and death may flourish.  Many will die for many to live in this society. Many of the problems that exist presently -are first engineered and created by intellectuals and the elites; then sold to the masses through the media, social institutions and the entertainment sector; then bought by the masses; and then maintained by the corporations, social institutes, and the national governments for the "benefit" of profits and opportunity. 

Benevolent nurses and benevolent doctors, well meaning fundraisers and well meaning volunteers, as well as positive and hard working charity organizers and charity organizations enable the system to run the way it is presently though they want nothing more than to find the cure and help those that are ill and dying.  In truth,
 "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and when profits is our sole objective in our individual lives and our national economies, reality is often blurred.  "It is not true that good can only follow from good and evil only from evil, but the opposite is true as well". 

Presently, the way the system is structured and built, there is not much that can be done to alter the way the system runs.
  There is too much monopolization and control of power, control of patents, control of research, and control of the financial resources by Big Pharma, by Corporations, by Social Institutions, and by the Media -that very few options exist in order to alter this system in place.   It is a "lose-lose" situation for those that find themselves infected by diseases.  The infected can choose either to take the institutionalized medications/procedures or find alternatives.  Very few options exist in this regard once someone is infected.  There is no guarantees once someone is infected.


For those that cannot allow the truth to resonate deep inside and fail to believe that purpose for the masses on a collective level is created by the Elite and held together by the money and institutes they create and control.  Individuals must also come to grip with the fact that the whole system in place is held in check by individuals who are willing to work in order to survive and therefore because of that fact the system is held in place the way it is.  It is the collective masses who are complicit in all the activities that exist in the world that allow the system to function the way it does (and always has).  Some individuals turn to God and Religion in order to sanitize their souls and elevate themselves better than others, some turn to escapism in the many forms that it exists in this physical reality.  It doesn't change what exists in the physical world.  One can choose to believe what they perceive to be reality.  However, it doesn't change the reality that exists outside of their perception. 

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